When I was a girl, my literary idols were Anne Shirley, Jo March, and Lyra Belacqua. They were imaginative. They flouted convention. They were lovably outspoken. They always stood up for what they believed in, even when their convictions were…
Centered around what happens to one family during the summer of 1948, Elizabeth Poliner’s first novel, As Close to Us as Breathing, is a story of loss—whether sudden or creeping—and of memories layered in time. Narrator Molly sifts through mid-life…
Juliette Fay’s fourth book, The Tumbling Turner Sisters, is the story of four girls who try their hand as an acrobatic act in 1919 vaudeville, in an effort to save their poverty stricken family (Gallery Books 2016). Ultimately it is a…
I’m at a dinner party. My partner gestures to me and says to the man we’re making small talk with: “Rose is a writer. In fact, she’s writing a novel!” “Well, isn’t that something!” he begins. I take a sip…
My farm is a novel that writes itself over and over, year after year, always with a similar story arc: I plant, I tend, things go wrong, bugs invade. I fend off crows and raccoons. I pray for rain. I…
I never went to summer camp. I always wondered what it was like, that thing that other kids in other places got to do. My mom couldn’t afford it. Instead, my brother and I spent our summers trying to stay…