Blog
Here's a list of eight great books I read over the holidays and wanted to share with you. Definitely note when they publish on your new 2012 calendars!
Shelley Shepard Gray is the author of the "Seasons of Sugarcreek Sisters of the Heart" series. She lives with her family in southern Ohio, where she writes full time. Here she talks about her oral --- and aural --- experience with books.
Melissa Clark is a James Beard Foundation Award winner and writes about cuisine, wine, and travel for numerous publications, including the New York Times, where she writes the enormously popular “A Good Appetite” Dining Section column; Bon Appétit; Food & Wine; Martha Stewart; and the website Gilt Taste. Clark was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, where she now lives with her husband and daughter. Here she talks about a great cookbook she once received as a gift.
Patricia Bosworth was born in Oakland, CA, the daughter of writer Anna Gertrude Bosworth and attorney Bartley Crum, one of the six lawyers who defended the Hollywood Ten during the Red Scare at the start of the Cold War in 1947. Her younger brother, Bartley Crum Jr., and her father both committed suicide. Bosworth wrote a memoir about her family ANYTHING YOUR LITTLE HEART DESIRES, published by Simon&Schuster. After receiving her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College in 1955 she became a member of the Actors Studio, in Manhattan, but in 1964 she quit acting and went into journalism. Since, she has worked at and written for the New York Times, McCalls, Harpers Bazaar, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Esquire and Vanity Fair where she has been since 1988. In the 1990s she began teaching non-fiction writing at Columbia and Barnard; she lectured at Yale and the New School and is currently co-chair of the Biography Seminar at NYU. She has published biographies of Montgomery Clift and the photographer Diane Arbus; she is also the author of a short biography of Marlon Brando. Bosworth is the winner of the Front Page award and was a senior fellow at the National Arts Journalism program at Columbia. Here she talks about the Christmas she met William Saroyan.
Anne Perry is a bestselling author of historical detective fiction, most notably the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series and the William Monk series, both set in Victorian England. Her first book,THE CATER STREET HANGMAN (1979), launched both the Pitt series and her career as a premier writer of Victorian mysteries. The William Monk series of novels, featuring a Victorian police officer turned private investigator, includes FUNERAL IN BLUE and THE SILENT CRY. In addition to these series, Perry is also author of a number of World War I novels as well as several collections of short stories. Perry's novels have appeared on bestseller lists around the world and she has over twenty-five million books in print worldwide. Here she talks about a suprising gift she received from a second-hand bookshop.
N.M.Kelby (Nicole Mary Kelby) has been translated into several languages and offered by The Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club, and Quality Paperback Book Club. She is the recipient of a Bush Artist Fellowship in Literature, an NEA Inter-Arts grant, the Heekin Group Foundation's James Fellowship for the Novel, both a Florida and Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship in fiction, two Jerome Travel Study Grants, and a Jewish Arts Endowment Fellowship. Here she talks about the library of books she was gifted over the years.
Michael Lee West is the author of six novels including GONE WITH A HANDSOMER MAN, CRAZY LADIES, MAD GIRLS IN LOVE, AMERICAN PIE, SHE FLEW THE COOP as well as a food memoir CONSUMING PASSIONS. She lives with her husband on a farm in Lebanon, Tennessee with three bratty Yorkshire Terriers, a Chinese Crested, assorted donkeys, chickens, sheep, and African Pygmy goats. Her faithful dog Zap was the inspiration of a character in MERMAIDS IN THE BASEMENT. Here she talks about how Daphne DuMaurier’s REBECCA made her want to become a writer.
An award-winning poet and bestselling author with a Ph.D. in literature and creative writing, Marisa de los Santos lives in Wilmington, Delaware, with her husband, the children’s book author David Teague, and their son and daughter. She’s the author of the bestsellers LOVE WALKED IN and BELONG TO ME. Here she talks about a balance beam she once received as a gift from her grandfather.
Philip Galanes is the author of SOCIAL Q'S the cock-eyed advice column published weekly in the Sunday Styles section of The New York Times. In the year since its debut, the column has become one of the most highly-read and consistently-searched features of the paper. Philip is also an entertainment lawyer and novelist. He was born and raised in New England, and graduated from Yale College and Yale Law School. He occasionally sidelines as an interior designer, and his projects have been published in Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, New York Magazine, and The New York Times. Here he talks about an attempt to re-gift.
Award-winning writer Susan Meissner is a multi-published author, speaker and workshop leader with a background in community journalism. Her novels include THE SHAPE OF MERCY (named by Publishers Weekly as one of the Best Books of 2008), WHITE PICKET FENCES, LADY IN WAITING, and A SOUND AMONG THE TREES. Here she talks about the first poetry book she ever received --- one she still has.
