Liza Monroy's debut novel was published by Spiegel & Grau, a division of Random House.
See more here.
Catherine Lacey recently interviewed me for literary blog HTMLgiant. We talked about approaches to writing a first novel, why fiction trumped memoir, and what happens when people think your novel’s characters are them. I divulged what I’m doing to my second book, and another no-longer-secret thing related to my last post. Check it out here.
I’m heading off to Maine for an assignment — I will post the article here when it comes out in October or November. Won’t give anything away now other than…let’s just say I’m very excited about this one.
After Sherene told me that Amma was going to be in town, holding all-nighter Darshan at the Manhattan Center, I was intrigued. Now I’m embarrassed to admit I knew next to nothing about the hugging saint who drew a stunning amount of New Yorkers and travelers to her programs. There was quite a line during the day so I took a number and went downstairs for the delicious vegetarian Indian food, and about an hour later, took off.
Writer Tracy Lopez reviewed Mexican High on her lit blog Curious Villager this week. Gracias, Tracy!
If you’re in the New York area, come check out some saw-it-here-first works-in-progress at the Roots & Vines Cafe (details on 2nd-draft_5_b1).
Writers Caren Osten Gerszberg and Leah Odze Epstein, co-editors of an anthology-in-progress called SPILL, have started a sharp-looking blog as part of this project about women and drinking. The same day Caren and Leah contacted me about it, I’d picked up the first books I have ever bought in the self-help section of a bookstore: Adult Children of Alcoholics and Losing a Parent. Clearly, this is something I wanted to read and write about to come to terms with my own thoughts and feelings about a personal/family situation and loss, and how it continually affects me and the kind of writing I do, but on a larger scale this anthology feels necessary. So many women have been and continually are affected by drinking, whether a partner’s, family member’s, or their own. The secrecy and shame that goes along with it must be broken.
“Writing is a technology, after all, and there is a sense in which human beings who write can be thought of as writing machines.”
I call the Kerouac Project “the residency that keeps on giving” — two years after the summer I spent writing in the house (where Jack Kerouac wrote Dharma Bums in eleven days on a scroll) I attended the second annual fundraiser at Summer and Steven’s house - Steven designed this website and Summer is one of the project’s founding members - and a great time at their lakeside eco-manor ensued.
