Archive for the ‘Non Fiction’ Category


11.11.07 Working for the Man by Jeffrey Yamaguchi

working for the man For anyone frustrated with the soul-killing monotony of a nine-to-five job, this quirky collection helps beat the office blues, inspire creativity in seemingly dead-end situations, and preserve a bit of integrity in a conformist corporate culture. Among other things, you will learn how to:

- Survive long, boring meetings
- Plot out a “sick day” calendar to maximize time off
- Write your novel on company time
- Create the most pro-worker cubicle to instill a false sense of your total commitment
- Anonymously send your boss a Happy Secretary’s Day bouquet

Overall, the book aims to turn the daily grind on its head, so that instead of feeling overwhelmed and disgruntled, you will foster fun and creative ways to make the workplace work for you.

WR: Jeffrey Yamaguchi About the Author: Jeffrey Yamaguchi threw himself a retirement party at the age of 26. No, he had not won the lottery or benefited from a stock options windfall. It was just wishful thinking, which continues on to this day. More of his schemes can be found at workingfortheman.com and 52projects.com. His new book, Working For The Man: Inspiring and Subversive Projects for Residents of Cubicle Land, has just been published by Penguin.

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

____________

Erin Hennicke is back to chat about books and books to film! Join us at 6:40 as we chat all things books & film! Erin Hennicke started her career in the Subsidiary Rights Department of Viking Penguin before segueing into the film industry as a story editor at Barbra Streisand’s production company, Barwood Films, where she oversaw development and production. In 2000, Erin joined Franklin & Siegal & Associates, the largest literary scouting agency in New York, where for the past seven years she has scouted books & material for Universal Studios, among others, a job that allows her to have a foot in both the film and publishing industries.

11.4.04 Matrimony & How Sassy Changed My Life

Matrimony 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.

WR This Weekend: Joshua Henkin 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!

________________

How Sassy Changed My Life 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.

WR 11.4.07 How Sassy Changed My Life 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!

8.26.07 Katherine Taylor & Alison Weaver

rules for saying goodbye Rules for Saying Goodbye follows a fictional Katherine Taylor as she makes her way from a farm-town girlhood toward the cosmopolitan adulthood she imagines for herself. From a Massachusetts boarding school to a dissolute life in Manhattan to a stint in Europe that culminates in a failed engagement, Rules explores the comic undertones of tragedy and disappointment, homesickness and loss, and the dynamics of contemporary middle class American family life.

Writers Revealed: KatherineTaylor Katherine Taylor has won a Pushcart Prize, and her work has appeared in such journals as Ploughshares. Much like her fictional alter ego, she has burned bridges in London, Rome, and Brussels, but now lives in Los Angeles.

Essential Links
Read an excerpt from Rules for Saying Goodbye
Toronto Star Review
LA Weekly Review
SF Gate Review

Want to score a copy of Rules for Saying Goodbye? Leave a question for the author, and if we use it on air, you’ll win!

gone to the crazies Gone to the Crazies tells the story of a young woman’s search for identity and mental equilibrium. It follows her from her childhood on the Upper East Side of New York City to a “therapeutic rehabilitation” boarding school in the mountains of northern California, where she is sent at fifteen years old and remains until graduation at eighteen. Cascade is more cult than cure, and within the surreal isolation of the school’s mountain campus, she leaves her old self behind, warping into a brainwashed model of Cascade’s mottos and ideals.

Writers Revealed: Alison Weaver Upon returning to New York City in 1996, she is fundamentally lost and begins to ingest copious amounts of drugs to fill the emptiness that has always been quietly present. She quickly falls into a frightening and reckless addiction that eventually forces her to examine the hazy mess of her life and find the sanity she has long been searching for.

Essential Links
Read an excerpt from Gone to the Crazies (pdf doc)
HOW Literary Journal
PlayPhilly.com Review

Want to score a copy of Gone to the Crazies? Leave a question for the author, and if we use it on air, you’ll win!

8.12.07 Kevin Sessums, Jenni Ferrari-Adler & Laura Dave

Mississippi SissyMississippi Sissy is the stunning memoir from Kevin Sessums, a celebrity journalist who grew up scaring other children, hiding terrible secrets, pretending to be Arlene Frances and running wild in the South. As he grew up in Forest, Mississippi, befriended by the family maid, Mattie May, he became a young man who turned the word “sissy” on its head, just as his mother taught him. In Jackson, he is befriended by Eudora Welty and journalist Frank Hains, but when Hains is brutally murdered in his antebellum mansion, Kevin’s long road north towards celebrity begins.

Writers Revealed: Kevin Sessums About the Author: Kevin Sessums was until recently a contributing editor at Allure magazine after spending fourteen years at Vanity Fair in that same capacity. Before joining Vanity Fair, he was Executive Editor for Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. His work has also appeared in Elle, Travel + Leisure, Playboy, Out, and Show People magazines. He lives in New York.

Chat with Kevin at 7pm. Want to score a copy of Mississippi Sissy? We have books and audio books to give away! Leave your question in the comments field. If we use your question on air, you’ll score a free book!

______________

Alone in the Kitchen with an EggplantIf, sooner or later, we all face the challenge or the pleasure of eating alone, then Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant provides the perfect set of instructions. In this unique collection, twenty-six writers and foodies invite readers into their kitchens to reflect on the secret meals they make for themselves when no one else is looking: the indulgent truffled egg sandwich, the comforting bowl of black beans, the bracing anchovy fillet on buttered toast.

From Italy to New York to Cape Cod to Thailand, from M. F. K. Fisher to Steve Almond to Nora Ephron, the experiences collected in this book are as diverse, moving, hilarious, and uplifting as the meals they describe.

Writers Revealed: Jenni Ferrari-Adler Jenni Ferrari-Adler (Editor) is a graduate of Oberlin College and the University of Michigan, where she received an MFA in fiction. She has worked as a reader for The Paris Review, a bookseller, an egg-seller, and an assistant at a literary agency. Her short fiction has been published in numerous magazines. Please visit with the author at http://www.aloneinthekitchen.com

Writers Revealed: Laura Dave Laura Dave (Contributor) is the author of the novels London Is the Best City in America, and The Divorce Party, which is forthcoming from Viking-Penguin in May 2008. Her writing has appeared in ESPN the Magazine, The New York Observer, Blueprint and Self. Please visit with the author at http://www.lauradave.com

Chat with the contributors at 7:30pm. Click here for an excerpt from Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant


Want to score a copy of the anthology? Leave your question for the contributors below! If we use your question on air, you’ll win!

After the jump, read an excerpt from Mississippi Sissy

(more…)

WR This Weekend: Virtual Book Club debuts!

Writers Revealed: Meredith Hall There are so many ways you can tune into Writers Revealed! Next show is this Sunday, at 7pm EST/4pm PST

1. Click here to listen to the live show
2. Going to miss the show? No worries. Click here to download the podcast
3. Want to call in and chat with our guest? Call (310) 984-7600
4. Want to chat with us? We’ve got a live messageboard
5. Or leave your question in the comments section below.

Enjoy!

8.5.07 WR’s Virtual Book Club Debuts with Meredith Hall!

Without a Map Meredith Hall’s moving but unsentimental memoir begins in 1965, when she becomes pregnant at sixteen. Shunned by her insular New Hampshire community, she is then kicked out of the house by her mother. Her father and stepmother reluctantly take her in, hiding her before they finally banish her altogether. After giving her baby up for adoption, Hall wanders recklessly through the Middle East, where she survives by selling her possessions and finally her blood. She returns to New England and stitches together a life that encircles her silenced and invisible grief. When he is twenty-one, her lost son finds her. Hall learns that he grew up in gritty poverty with an abusive father—in her own father’s hometown. Their reunion is tender, turbulent, and ultimately redemptive. Hall’s parents never ask for her forgiveness, yet as they age, she offers them her love. What sets Without a Map apart is the way in which loss and betrayal evolve into compassion, and compassion into wisdom.

Writers Revealed: Meredith Hall About the Author: At the age of forty-four, Meredith Hall graduated from Bowdoin College. She wrote her first essay, “Killing Chickens,” in 2002. Two years later, she won the $50,000 Gift of Freedom Award from A Room of Her Own Foundation, which gave her the financial freedom to devote time to Without a Map, her first book. Her other honors include a Pushcart Prize and notable essay recognition in Best American Essays; she was also a finalist for the Rona Jaffe Award. Hall’s work has appeared in the New York Times, Creative Nonfiction, The Southern Review, Five Points, Prairie Schooner, and several anthologies. She teaches writing at the University of New Hampshire and lives in Maine.

Read an excerpt from Without a Map
Reading Group Guide
Boston Globe Review

Want to learn how YOU can join our Virtual Book Club? Click Here!

Meredith Hall will stop by the website after her live to chat to field questions in the comments field. Leave your question here and you will be eiligible to win a *free* copy of Without a Map

7.29.07 Join Us for Our Live Chat: Boss Lady! How to Be a Successful Entrepreneur

Want to leave the cubicle behind? Want to learn how to concept and execute a sound business plan? Want to venture on a new career path but don’t know where to begin? Want to learn how to earn a living doing what you’re most passionate about? This Sunday, July 29, four successful female entrepreneurs: Alex Beauchamp, Emira Mears, Lauren Bacon and Michelle Goodman will deliver practical career advice on for women who want to escape the cube.

All three authors will be chatting in the comments space on this post on Sunday, 7pm EST/4pm PST. They will be available to answer all questions posted in the comments field (you can post questions anytime prior the live chat until 8pm EST/5pm PST, when the chat concludes). Since our comments field doesn’t automatically refresh, please hit REFRESH on your browser to see responses and latest comments! Feel free to stop by, chat, share your stories and ask your questions of these women who have forged successful careers as entrepreneurs!

Related Posts
Emira & Lauren: Do You Need a Business Plan?
Michelle Goodman’s Advice for How to Get Your Ducks in a Row Before You Quit
Michelle Goodman’s How do you Survive Work as a Short Timer?
7.29.07 Writers Revealed Live Chat: Boss Lady (pt 1: Meet Our Guests!)

Alex Beauchamp on Money! Money! Money!

Alex Beauchamp will be available via live chat to give advice on how you can be a successful entrepreneur. Live chat: 7.29.07 at 7pm EST, here on Writers Revealed.

Money is a funny thing - so many people want it, few seem to have it and even fewer want to talk about it. I’m not sure why so many people are so tightly lipped about money but I think being quiet contributes so much to why people don’t understand it, are afraid of it or simply don’t have it. I think people should be taught fiscal management in schools instead of about the French revolution (and I’m half French) and I think people should really talk about money so they can learn whether or not they should be self-employed.

How I financially survive is probably the second most common question I’m asked. I do not have a sugar daddy (you wouldn’t believe how many people think this!), I do not have a trust fund, I do not have parents, and I don’t have lotto winnings. So how do I survive financially?

Here it goes:
(more…)

Download Previous Shows

Need editing services?

Ask an Expert - Visit Alison's Office at Kasamba