Long in scope, ambitious with its characters, and grounded with realism and wry humor, MATRIMONY introduces us to Julian Wainwright and Mia Mendelsohn. Here are two intensely likeable yet wonderfully flawed characters, who meet their freshman year at Graymont College, a liberal arts school in western Massachusetts. Julian, an aspiring writer, has arrived at college from New York to study with his literary hero. Mia has come from Montreal searching for something new and unknown. When they meet, folding laundry, they fall deeply and happily into first love.

But real life soon intrudes, and a family crisis arises at the end of their senior year that will cement their relationship more seriously and quickly than they could have imagined. Together they make their way through the next fifteen years — through career changes, family conflicts and losses, betrayals and successes. From the university towns of Ann Arbor, Berkeley, and Iowa City, to the brownstones of Greenwich Village, the novel moves back and forth between Julian and Mia’s perspectives as Henkin explores the choices and sacrifices we make at different stages in our lives, our changes in ambition and desire, and how we come to lead the lives we live.

Starting at the height of the Reagan era and ending in thenew millennium, Matrimony is about love and friendship, about money and ambition, desire and tensions of faith. It asks what happens to a marriage when it is confronted by betrayal and the specter of mortality. What happens when people marry younger than they’d expected? Can love endure the passing of time?

The author will be joining the show at 6:00pm. Want to score a free copy of Matrimony? Leave a comment for the author here, and if we use it on the air, you’ll win a free book!

The inside story of Sassy is bittersweet—a teen magazine with an enormous, almost cult-like following, it enjoyed a brief but brilliant run from 1988 to 1994. For a generation of teenage girls, Sassy was nothing short of revolutionary, the signifier of all that was hip and cool . . . a phenomenon that brought the idea of girl power and girl culture into the mainstream.

Sassy had a knack for discovering the hippest new celebrities and musicians; it was the first commercial magazine to showcase riot grrrl, was chosen by Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love for their first cover photo as a couple, and also launched the careers of Chloe Sevigny and Spike Jonze. More than that, Sassy embraced social activism—it made feminism cool and it was never afraid to tackle taboo issues like teen sex and suicide. Today, Sassy nostalgia is very much alive. With the mainstream media even more juggernaut-ish than it was in the early ‘90s, Sassy devotees have landed in the blog world, where legions of fans keep Sassy alive by sharing their first-person chronicles of their love of Sassy, pop culture, activism, and stories about their lives.

About the Authors: Kara Jesella and Marisa Meltzer are New York–based writers. They have written and edited for publications such as The New York Times, Teen Vogue, Elle Girl, Bitch, Jane, Spin, Entertainment Weekly, Nylon, Nerve, and Elle.

Essential Links!
www.howsassychangedmylife.com
www.myspace.com/sassybook
Buy the Book

The authors will be joining the show at 6:25pm. Want to score a free copy of How Sassy Changed My Life? Leave a comment for the authors here, and if we use it on the air, you’ll win a free book!

Due to technical difficulties, our show with Amy Bloom will be rescheduled. Date TBD. Tune in next week for Joshua Henkin (author of Matrimony) and Kara Jesella & Marisa Meltzer (authors of How Sassy Changed My Life)!

Panoramic in scope, Away is the epic and intimate story of young Lillian Leyb, a dangerous innocent, an accidental heroine. When her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, Lillian comes to America alone, determined to make her way in a new land. When word comes that her daughter, Sophie, might still be alive, Lillian embarks on an odyssey that takes her from the world of the Yiddish theater on New York’s Lower East Side, to Seattle’s Jazz District, and up to Alaska, along the fabled Telegraph Trail toward Siberia. All of the qualities readers love in Amy Bloom’s work–her humor and wit, her elegant and irreverent language, her unflinching understanding of passion and the human heart–come together in the embrace of this brilliant novel, which is at once heartbreaking, romantic, and completely unforgettable.

About the Author: Amy Bloom is the author of the acclaimed story collection Come to Me, a National Book Award finalist, and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award; a novel, Love Invents Us, and a nonfiction work, Normal. Bloom teaches creative writing at Yale University, where she is a fellow of Calhoun College.

Click here to visit Amy Bloom’s website.

This beautiful, effulgent book sped me forward word by word, out of the room I was in and into Amy Bloom’s world. This is a wonderful novel, a cosmos that transcends its time period and grabs us without compromise. Lillian’s astonishing journey, driven by a mother’s love, will be with me for a long, long time.
–Ron Carlson, author of The Speed of Light

We’re seeking book lovers, you, for our virtual book club. It’s easy to join and why not have the opportunity to chat live with terrific authors? We have slots available for our 11.25.07 club with Carol Muske-Dukes, author of Channeling Mark Twain & 12.16.07 with Antoine Wilson, author of The Interloper. Want more details, click here, or email us at writersrevealed -at- writersrevealed -dot- com.

A tragic accident sets in motion a cycle of violence and retribution in John Burnham Schwartz’s riveting novel Reservation Road. Two haunted men and their families are engulfed by the emotions surrounding an unexpected and horrendous death. Ethan, a respected professor of literature at a small New England college, is wracked by an obsession with revenge that threatens to tear his family apart. Dwight, a man at once fleeing his crime and hoping to get caught, wrestles with overwhelming guilt and his sense of obligation to his son. As these two men’s lives unravel, Reservation Road moves to its startling conclusion. This is an astonishing tale of love and loss, rage and redemption, that is as suspenseful as it is emotionally compelling.

“Haunting. . . . A powerful and affecting novel.”–The New York Times

About the Author: John Burnham Schwartz is the author of the novels Claire Marvel, Bicycle Days and Reservation Road, which is being made into a motion picture based on his screenplay, starring Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Ruffalo, and Jennifer Connelly. His books have been translated into more than fifteen languages and his writing has appeared in many publications, including the New York Times, The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, and Vogue. He lives with his wife and son in Brooklyn, New York.

Click here to read an excerpt from Reservation Road
Check out the Vintage Screening Room

Want to win a copy of Reservation Road? Leave your question for the author in the comments field, and if we use your question on the air, you’ll score a free book!

Inspired by her relationship with murderer Robert Weeks, Rose Marie Kinder spun real life into elegant fiction. A noted story collection author, Kinder’s debut novel about the life of a genteel serial killer Arthur Blume unraveling. The author and I chatted about Arthur Blume - a man who loved his Victorian furniture and meditations on the animal kingdom - a quiet man who had committed monstrous crimes. We discussed the great serial killers, Othello, heavy-handed Gothic’s and how to avoid their narrative pitfalls, the consideration of time, compartmentalizing it, Faulkner as an influence, the predatory-prey relationship between mother and offspring in the animal kingdom, Arthur’s mother who we first meet as a wild creature - part Medusa, very much Medea, and his relationships with two key characters: Nada, the 70ish aspiring poet who is a sweet, maternal figure, and Grace, his pill-popping colleague and lover.

Click here to listen to our chat and enter the mind of a serial killer and the author who created him.

We’re off next week (your host will be shamelessly promoting her forthcoming memoir at NAIBA), however, join us on Oct. 21 as we chat with John Burnham Schwartz, author of Reservation Road

Fresh out of graduate school, Holly Mattox is a young, newly married, and spirited poet who moves to New York City from Minnesota in the early 1970’s. Hoping to share her passion for words and social justice, Holly is also determined to contribute to the politically charged atmosphere around her. Her mission: to successfully teach a poetry workshop at the Women’s House of Detention on Rikers Island, only minutes from Manhattan.

Having listened to her mother recite verse by heart all her life, Holly has always been drawn to poetry. Yet until she stands before a class made up of prisoners and detainees–all troubled women charged with a variety of crimes–even Holly does not know the full power that language can possess. Words are the only weapon left to many of these outspoken women: the hooker known as Baby Ain’t (as in “Baby Ain’t Nobody Better!”); Gene/Jean, who is mid-sex change; drug mule Never Delgado; and Akilah Malik, a leader of the Black Freedom Front.

One woman in particular will change Holly’s life forever: Polly Lyle Clement, an inmate awaiting transfer to a mental hospital upstate, one day announces that she is a descendant of Mark Twain and is capable of channeling his voice. And so begins Holly’s descent into the dark recesses of the criminal justice system, where in an attempt to understand and help her students she will lose her perspective on the nature of justice–and risk ruining everything stable in her life. As Holly begins an affair with a fellow poet–who claims to know her better than she knows herself–she finds herself adrift between two ends of thesocial and political spectrum, between two men and two identities.

We plan on inviting Carol Muske-Dukes to join us in our monthly virtual book club. Are you interested in participating & chatting with this author, LIVE? If so, please leave a comment here or email us at writersrevealed -AT- writersrevealed.com