A Year in Books for Some Bay Area Writers

I belong to a network of women writers in and around Northern California called Word of Mouth Bay Area. This group is bursting with talent and generosity, and I wanted to share some members’ recent successes with you–and point you to some great reads–and celebrate the fecund creativity of the Bay Area! Today’s blog describes accomplishments achieved and books published in 2010. Tomorrow’s blog will look at 2011, including books to watch out for . . .

Some of these books have been or will be featured as part of the Book Writing World’s featured author series. BWW classes start this week. Learn more about joining the Book Writing World classes here. Or sign up here.

If you’ve read any of these authors, please feel free to add your comments.

Lucy Jane Bledsoe’s The Big Bang Symphony (University of Wisconsin Press, May 2010) tells the story of three women–a composer,a galley cook, and a climate change geologist—who take jobs in Antarctica, where they fall in love and in trouble.

In Tanya Egan Gibson’s debut novel, How To Buy a Love of Reading (paperback, July 2010, Plume), fabulously wealthy parents set out to “fix” their teenage daughter’s hatred of books by commissioning a failed meta-novelist to custom write a book tailored to her interests.  One problem: they know little about what their daughter cares about, or how she thinks, or who she loves.  (Another problem: they know even less about what a “meta-novel” might be.)

Rosemary Graham’s YA novel, Stalker Girl, (Viking, August 2010) will be released in paperback (SPEAK) in June, 2011.  Stalker Girl has been praised by Booklist  for its “intelligent structure and design.” The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books called it an “achingly believable” portrait of a young girl’s obsession. Teen book bloggers say it’s “fascinating,” “mesmerizing,” and “disturbing.”

Acclaimed bestseller Blue Nude (paperback, Sept. 2010, Gallery,), by Elizabeth Rosner, tells the haunting story of a post-war German painter and his Israeli muse, whose colliding histories are reconciled through the transformative power of art.

My Lie:  A True Story of False Memory by Meredith Maran, (September 2010, Jossey-Bass/Wiley) was chosen a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2010. “In this terrifying, haunting, and controversial memoir, award-winning journalist Meredith Maran opens up a dialogue about memory, belief, and past- and present-day culture that is as riveting as it is important.”—Caroline Leavitt in The Boston Globe.

Catherine Brady’s story collection The Mechanics of Falling received the 2010 Northern California Book Award for Fiction. Her new book, Story Logic and the Craft of Fiction (Palgrave Macmillan, Oct. 2010), illuminates how technique serves “story logic,” the particular way fiction makes meaning, and supplies the analytical tools needed to read as a writer.

Jessica Inclan’s paranormal romance, Being with Him (October 2010, Kensington Books), was re-released. The main characters, Mila Adams and Garrick McClellan, feel isolated and alone, both hiding their special talents that do not seem special at all—the ability to move through time in ways other humans cannot.  When they meet, they find solace in their connection, but soon face problems more intense and much farther away than those they faced on earth.

Immersing the reader in a rich, wide world of literary obsession, The Man Who Loved Books Too Much (paperback edition, Oct. 2010, Riverhead), a true story by Allison Hoover Bartlett, exposes the profound role books play in all of our lives, the reverence in which these everyday objects are still held, and the craving that makes some people willing to stop at nothing to possess the books they love.

Winner of the 2010 Cervena Barva Fiction Award judged by Dorothy Freudenthal, Joan Gelfand’s Here & Abroad (Nov. 2010, Cervena Barva Press) takes the reader on a world tour from Paris to Florence to Berkeley, CA, to explore wide-ranging themes including Jewish artists during the Nazi occupation, Renaissance art, and the vicissitudes of family life.

Winner of the 2010 Saroyan International Prize for Writing, The King of Vodka by Linda Himelstein (paperback, Nov. 2010, Harper Perennial) is the dramatic rags-to-riches-to-rags tale of the Smirnov vodka family. The King of Vodka was a finalist for the James Beard Award and was lauded for reading “more like a vivid cinematic script than meticulously researched nonfiction” by the San Jose Mercury News.

Praised by the NY Times for a “tantalizing sense of indirection, Thaisa Frank’s debut novel Heidegger’s Glasses (Nov. 2010, Counterpoint) is written “in the spare minimalist style that won admiration for her short story collections” (Booklist).  Among her collections are A Brief History of Camouflage and  Sleeping in Velvet. A PEN Award winner and Pushcart nominee, she is also the co- author of Finding Your Writer’s Voice, which is used in MFA programs. Foreign rights to HEIDEGGER’S GLASSES were sold to ten countries before publication and the novel has gone into a second printing after a November release date. It received a starred review in Publishers Weekly.

Did you read any of these? If not, add them to your list! If you have or have anything else to say, please add your comments below. Thanks.