I’m thrilled to share that the audiobook for Dreams Under Glass will release Fall 2024, and you’ll be able to purchase a copy through all major platforms or borrow one through your public library. Sound was a very important part of the composition of this book, both because I wanted it to sound “New York-y” in a way that felt homey to me and because I worked on it as a Jack Straw Writing Fellow in 2015, a program that trains writers for performance and voice recording. (You’ll see via the Jack Straw link that back then the work-in-progress was simply titled Paralegal. Titles are hard!) I am not the narrator of this audiobook—a professional narrator is—and I can’t wait to listen to their interpretation of my novel. Huzzah!
I’m grateful to Alex Carrigan for this kind review of Dreams Under Glass in Necessary Fiction. I so appreciate how different reviewers have highlighted different aspects of the novel, whether the creative process, Jewish identity, the romance, or here, the power dynamic of work:
One of the novel’s central themes is how forces beyond an artist’s control can stymie both art and artist. Binnie works in the Lipstick Building, which housed Bernie Madoff’s organization and was at the center of the housing market collapse. Her firm is run by three people who are set in their ways and comfortable throwing their wealth and power around. Binnie may enjoy the fruits of their occasional generosity—chocolates in the break room, free opera tickets—but her bosses demand ever more in return for these perks, which they use to wield power over Binnie.
Read the full review here.
Over at Monkeybicycle, I wrote an If My Book column, in which authors compare their newly released books to weird things. Here’s how it begins:
If Dreams Under Glass were a cocktail, it would be an egg cream laced with roach poison.
If Dreams Under Glass were a television channel, it would be the UHF one I found on the attic TV when I was 8 or 9, twisting the dials round and round until I stumbled on a too-dark-for-children claymation-and-puppet show.
I’m grateful to Monkeybicycle for keeping things weird!
In 2012, two days after I thought what would become Daughters of the Air was finished, I started writing what would become Dreams Under Glass. Ten+ years and many drafts later, it is out in the world! Thank you so much to those of you who pre-ordered the book. If you'd like to help me get the word out, here are some things you can do:
Join me at the launch party at Exile in Bookville in downtown Chicago on Thursday at 7 pm. I’ll be in conversation with Rebecca Makkai! RSVP here for this free event. Or join me at one of my upcoming events around the country. Bring friends!
Buy the book at an independent bookstore to show booksellers enthusiasm for the book and support all the great work booksellers do.
Review the book on Goodreads, Powell’s, Amazon (you can review without purchasing there), Storygraph, LibraryThing, your personal blog or wherever reviews are shared.
Request your library purchase a copy.
Suggest it to your book club. I will be happy to join a discussion over Zoom if you would enjoy that!
Tell friends who read literary fiction, like a bit of dark humor, like Joseph Cornell or other surreal artists, stories set in New York City, or about struggling artists, or are interested in stories of the financial crisis of 2008 or the Bernie Madoff scandal.
Let me know if you'd like me to read at your reading series or come talk to your students or would like to adopt the book for a course.
Send me photos of you with the book and I will post it on Instagram! Or tag me, and I will happily repost. Tag the bookstore where you bought the book too!
Of course, these are all good things to do for any and all books out in the world that you wish to support. Thank you so much for championing literature!
I am so excited to share that you can now pre-order my second novel Dreams Under Glass. Pre-orders through Lanternfish Press will include a signed book plate; they’re also offering a bundle of both of my novels for $32. I would be thrilled, also, if you supported your local independent bookstore! Two lovely independent bookstores where I have events planned so far: Exile in Bookville in Chicago, where I will launch on September 29 in conversation with Rebecca Makkai, and Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, where I will be in conversation with Maya Sonenberg on November 3. If you’d like to stay in the loop about other events, you can sign up for my monthly newsletter here.
I am so very delighted to share that I've just signed a contract with Lanternfish Press for my second novel, to be published sometime in 2022. Some of you following this blog may be familiar with bits and bobs from the book, which for many years had the working title Paralegal, and which tells the story of a diorama artist working as a paralegal during the economic crisis of 2008, in the same building in which the Bernie Madoff scandal explodes. (Binnie, the protagonist, is influenced by the surrealist artist Joseph Cornell, hence the choice in art for this post. This particular collage also been my laptop wallpaper for ages...) The project received early support from 4Culture and the Jack Straw Writing Program, and it's so exciting to shepherd it on toward existence in the world!
ETA: Here is the official announcement from Lanternfish Press!
The podcast from my 2015 Jack Straw fellowship is now up on their blog. Curator Kevin Craft spoke with me about my novel-in-progress PARALEGAL and the creative process. Then I read an excerpt, featuring, among other things, cabbage and spite. (Per Levi Fuller's recommendation, I might retitle it CABBAGE AND SPITE.)Here's how the podcast begins:
Sometimes she wondered if part of her motivation to pursue art was simply spite.
ListenYou can pick up an anthology with this excerpt and those of all the 2015 fellows here. Many thanks to Kevin Craft, Levi Fuller, Joan Rabinowitz, and everyone at Jack Straw Cultural Center!
Women in Translation Month is around the corner! Last year, I compiled a list of translated books by women that I enjoyed and created a Women in Translation Bingo game. I also wrote about novellas by Marguerite Duras and Eileen Chang and poetry collections from Rocío Cerón and Angélica Freitas.This summer has been a bit more hectic as I've been teaching more, taking my second novel through an eighth draft, and researching my third novel. However! I'm excited for Women In Translation Month and wanted to share with you four books on my to-read pile.What have you been reading? 
On December 3 at 7 pm, I'm reading from my novel PARALEGAL at the Jewelbox Theater in Belltown. This performance culminates a year+ of work on a project whirred forward by support from 4Culture and Jack Straw Cultural Center, for which I am very grateful. I'll be joined by four fantastic Jack Straw Fellows whose work intersects with mine, on the topics of art, money, and desire: Bernard Grant, Emily Bedard, Matthew Schnirman, and Martha Kreiner. Please come!
Autumn, that busy literary season, starts a bit early for me, with three readings coming up this month, and more to follow September through December. As I promised on King 5's New Day Northwest (!!!), I will channel a young Jack Nicholson in at least one reading this year. 
AUGUST
- Wednesday August 19, 7:30 pm: Family Affair is a family-themed cabaret at the Rendezvous in Belltown. Jack Straw fellows Clare Johnson, Matthew Schnirman, Bernard Grant, Ross McMeekin, Jeanine Walker, and I will regale you with all things family.
- Thursday, August 27, 7 pm: Dock Street Salon at Phinney Books in Phinney Ridge/Greenwood. I'm reading alongside Angela Fountas. Prepare for a dark fairy tale.
- Friday, August 28, 7 pm: Jack Straw at the University Bookstore. Ross, Matthew, and I take on the U-District. After party on frat house row not included.
SEPTEMBER
- Thursday, September 10, 6 pm: An extra special Jack Straw event at the It's About Time Reading Series in Ballard, themed around Jack Straw, a leader of the English Peasant Revolt of 1381. These insurgent peasants traveled throughout southern England, gathering followers, opening prisons, killing lawyers and telling stories. As I'll be reading an excerpt from my novel-in-progress Paralegal, I've been tasked with covering the "killing lawyers" portion of the evening. Martha Kreiner will give a craft talk on opening prisons. L.J. Morin and Clare Johnson will gather all the followers and tell all the stories.
OCTOBER
- Thursday, October 22: Lit Crawl Seattle. Bazillions of writers take over the city. I'm excited to read at Alice Blue Books' Shotgun Wedding event. Details TBA.
NOVEMBER
- Saturday, November 2, 2 pm: Jack Straw at the Central Library downtown. All 12 Jack Straw Super Stars read poetry and fiction nuggets of gold.
DECEMBER
- Thursday, December 3, 7 pm: Pay Dirt at the Rendezvous in Belltown. To celebrate my 4Culture grant, I'll be reading from my novel Paralegal alongside fellow Jack Straws Emily Bedard, Matthew Schnirman, Bernard Grant, and Martha Kreiner. We'll dig up the dirt on art, money, desire, and making a living.
(No, I didn't shamelessly tag a zillion things in this post...Okay, yes I did.)
I like big cities and I cannot lie. They've fascinated me for a long time. Spike Lee, Woody Allen, Lena Dunham, John Dos Passos, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sapphire, and Betty Smith all have wildly different visions of New York City. Sometimes I feel apologetic for writing about New York, because of some perception that most writing about New York is stereotypical and/or because New York stories dominate the landscape and are therefore overdone.But, having grown up in Brooklyn, it is impossible for me not to write about it. And, as with any piece of writing, of course, the deeper you dig into something, the more you unpack a city or character's complexities, the farther away you get from tired old narratives. Write the story only you can write, advice I picked up at the Tin House Writers Conference, has been enormously valuable to me in moving forward with stories and novels and embracing my own peculiar vision. New York is the city I know best and the one I can endlessly burrow into.New York is not, however, the only city that fascinates me, whose identity offers multitudes. I fell head over heels in love with Tokyo and can't wait to get back there one day to walk its ancient alleys and zoom by its blinking towers. Reading 1Q84 after experiencing Tokyo made palpable the dreamy and unsettling alternate universes cities offer.Working on my first novel, I swam in a pile of books set in Buenos Aires. Fiction, memoir, reportage, poems. Anything I could get my hands on, starting with Borges. Then I was fortunate enough to take the leap and visit. That city's mix of architectural traditions (Spanish, English, French) creates the strange sensation of being in South America and Europe simultaneously. And the simultaneity feels more real because of my different encounters with the city through literature.Chicago is a place close to my heart, but whose literature I'm less steeped in. I love how the El downtown feels like a mash up of the outer boroughs of New York with stately old Chicago buildings. I know Saul Bellow writes Chicago, and he's been on my to-read list for quite some time, but I'm wondering about all the literary versions of Chicago. Other than say, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, also in my to-read pile.I'm wondering, too, about the literary versions of Seattle. Truth Like the Sun, Where'd You Go Bernadette, and Blueprints from the Afterlife have been in my to-read pile for some time. Now that I've lived in Seattle for over five years, I may find myself writing about it too. That is, after I get through novels two and three. One day.What are your favorite writers who have particular visions for the cities they write?
Friday's reading at Jack Straw was utterly lovely. Matthew Schnirman read poems brimming with desire and loss, such as "American Shot" :"When I remove my clothes, I want the wood floor to blush." L.J. Morin read from her fascinating series about the lost language of the Atures, discovered by Alexander von Humboldt on his journey to Venezuela in 1800, his desire to catalogue and measure characterized as "a mine shaft down the middle of him, an inexhaustible need." Linda Andrews, who won the Washington State Book Award for Escape of the Bird Women, read a fabulous story about a strutting hen: "Any female with that authority would feel ready for the world. Go on. Fold your wings back and see if the body doesn't tell you something. CUTO an old friend called it. C-U-T-O. Chin up, tits out." And I read an excerpt from my novel-in-progress, Paralegal, introducing the protagonist Binnie Greenson's parents, Albert and Arlene, in their Ocean Parkway co-op in Kensington, Brooklyn. I took particular pleasure enunciating the phrase "glops of rummy yam" and the word "trapezoidal." We, along with the rest of the Jack Straw fellows, all have work in the 2015 anthology, available at our readings all year, which will be at Folk Life on May 24, and at the the University Bookstore, the Seattle Public Library, and elsewhere in the fall. Kevin Craft, the 2015 curator, did such a fantastic job grouping each of the readings and introducing each of the readers.I was really happy with how my reading and its recording turned out. The voice coaching from Christine Brown and performance coaching from Elizabeth Austen were both excellent and super helpful. I've uploaded my reading to soundcloud. Podcasts from everyone's author interviews (conducted by Kevin Craft) with excerpts from our readings will be released in the fall here.Without further ado, an excerpt from my novel-in-progress, Paralegal:[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/205960491" params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%" height="450" iframe="true" /]
I'm very happy to have been chosen for the 2015 Jack Straw Writers Program by curator Kevin Craft. This is a great program in Seattle (though folks from Portland; Vancouver, B.C.; Olympia; Walla Walla and elsewhere in the region have participated) giving writers training and experience with recording, presentation, and author interviews as well as encouraging the development of new work and providing new venues for sharing their work with the public.I'll be using the program to continue developing my second novel, which I'm calling Paralegal for now, though that might change. We had a very nice orientation last night, and it was really lovely to hear snippets of poetry and fiction from each of the eleven other fellows! Stay tuned for the public readings (starting in May and continuing through the end of 2015) and a podcast featuring excerpts from my reading and author interview.
My latest blog post for Ploughshares offers writing prompts inspired by abstract art, with wisdom from Jeanette Winterson, and features a fantastic, electric illustration courtesy of Amy Frierson.Back when I was slogging through the first draft of my first novel, I looked to visual art every morning as a prompt. I had a big stack of Dover art stickers that I would randomly choose from, and stick in my journal, and over time, I found that Kandinsky helped me write my protagonist. I have no idea why. But when you're focusing on just getting words on the page, you do whatever works, right? Now I'm working on a couple projects dealing with art more deliberately, one of which I've written a bit about in these posts; the other is a bit too embryonic, but I'm excited about it and look forward to telling you more here when the time is right.
I normally think of August as a sleepy month for zoning out and wandering into enormous spider webs, but this year, in Seattle, there are quite a few things happening, all of which are free. Here's where I'll be if you'd like to join:*Thursday, August 7, 6 pm: ekFRANTICS, a reading of literature about imaginary art, with David Lasky and Arlo Smith at the Greg Kucera Gallery. This is being put on by the local press Babel/Salvage and coincides with the Pioneer Square Art Walk, one of my favorite art events in town. I'm reading selections from my novel-in-progress, Paralegal, about a 25-year-old visual artist who takes a job as a paralegal just before the economic crisis of 2008.*Thursday, August 14, 7 pm: My Body is a Book of Rules launch at Richard Hugo House. My dear friend Elissa Washuta launches her debut memoir, which I happily pre-ordered yesterday. I can't wait to get my hands on it and celebrate with her.*Thursday, August 21, 7 pm: The Furnace Presents Chelsea Werner Jatzke at Hollow Earth Radio. Corinne Manning and I are launching the third (!) season of our quarterly reading series featuring one writer, reading one entire story, "with vigor." Chelsea's story is inspired by the Velvet Underground. Come see it live; it's gonna be rad.*Monday, August 25, 7 pm: Seattle Fiction Federation #1 at Richard Hugo House: Corinne is reading at this new series featuring fiction only. I'm excited for this new venue.*Tuesday, August 26, 8 pm: Old Growth Northwest Reading & Opening Mic at the Jewel Box Theater: I'm a featured reader alongside Matthew Simmons and Melody Moberg. We're all reading new work in response to the prompt "My first day on the job was much like my last," plus something else of our choosing. Fun!Then after a week in California for my best & oldest friend's wedding, I've got one more very fun reading called Seattle Wage Slaves: Tales from the Grind, which features stories about work. I'm reading alongside Steve Barker, Sonora Jha, Michael Spence, and Wilson Diehl. That's on Thursday, September 11 at 6:30 at Office Nomads. There will be spiked coffee and free donuts!
I'm so honored to receive a 2014 Art Project grant from 4Culture for my novel Paralegal. Thank you, 4Culture, for all that you do in King County!Stay tuned for more news on this / upcoming events. In the meantime, here is a short snippet about the novel from an interview I did on the Hugo House blog in March (skip down to "What are you currently working on?"). Hooray!
I've been feeling anxious about the many things I'm juggling at the moment, so I just did a "brain-dump," hashing out my immediate deadlines and less imminent ones, projects where I owe work to others and projects where I owe work to myself, and when in the coming months I will be able to do that. This is something I do from time to time, but having just finished auditing the ArtistTrust EDGE program, I have a few more tips and resources under my belt, with healthy reminders about making time for the writing and valuing that work. I feel a lot better. Of my own projects, there are a handful of short stories that I want to develop further, a handful to submit (or continue submitting), and a general plan to arrange the collection (in hard copy, not in my mind, which I've pretty much done) in September.Anxiety-reduction aside, the brain dump also got me excited about looking ahead to my second novel. I wrote a quick, rough sketch of about 115 pages last April and put it aside to simmer. I took a number of inspiring and invigorating classes at Hugo House in March, including Chris Abani's class on voice and Sam Lipsyte's class on keeping a story going. Now, I'm taking Peter Mountford's excellent class on narrative structure, and had a really productive workshop of my synopsis and first chapter. I'm looking forward to digging deeper into the main conflict of the story before I set out to rewrite with more intention. And I'm excited to keep reading novels that I think will feed this book. For my first novel, I read countless books. I wish I had kept a more careful list all in one place, but my notes are scattered over many notebooks, and it would take me some time to sift through the pages to put it all together. I pretty much read anything I could get my hands on that was from or about Argentina and seemed remotely related, as well as a number of books that used magic realism in some way similar to how I tend to write it. I'm trying to be more organized about my second novel.So far, here are some of the works feeding into Novel # 2. If you have any recommendations that fit into the nodes developing here, feel free to leave a comment!
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