Elizabeth Benedict's Blog, page 5

Sunday 4/21 in Westport

Join me this Sunday April 21 at 2pm at the Westport Public Library, talking about mothers, gifts, and what they gave us. My new anthology, WHAT MY MOTHER GAVE ME, with essays by Joyce Carol Oates, Caroline Leavitt, Rita Dove, Elinor Lipman, Emma Straub, Elissa Schappell and many more women, is on the Extended Indie Bestseller List! The event is co-sponsored by the Barnard Alumnae Club of CT!

Finally, A Book My Grandmother Would Like ...

The story of my grandmother, my first novel (chocked with sex), and another sort of first book, just published on Huffington Post's Book Page :My grandmother never used to phone me, so when I heard her voice on the phone that night in 1985, I was startled."I just read your book," she said sharply, "and I don't like it." She meant my first novel, Slow Dancing, which had recently been published by Knopf and greeted with far more attention than I had expected, "When are you going to write a book your grandmother will like?"I knew what she meant: the book was filled with sex -- the pre-marital kind -- and references to it, beginning with the opening line. MORE...

Indie Bestseller ~~

Join me this Sunday, April 21, at the Westport, CT Public Library, talking about What My Mother Gave Me, co-sponsored by the Barnard Club of Connecticut. 2PM. Here's the info: 

In other happy news: What My Mother Gave Me has made the extended Indie Bestseller List. Today we're number 38. Who knows how high we can climb. Algonquin has made it easy to purchase the book--it's an original paperback, with a cover price of $15.95. 

AND if you go to your favorite indie and buy a Kobo (the indie answer to a Kindle) from now until May 13, you get a free copy of the anthology loaded on your e-reader. Here's the offer, which is sponsored by Algonquin. 

Thanks for checking in, thanks for reading.

~~Liz

My First Time ...

Thanks to FOBBIT author David Abrams, who curates the blog Quivering Pen, for inviting me to tell him about My First Time ... getting my picture taken, by legendary photographer, Tom Victor (RIP). http://www.davidabramsbooks.blogspot....

Susan Stamberg, Eleanor Clift & I...

Tues. April 9. 7pm. Please join us for the kick-off event for WHAT MY MOTHER GAVE ME: 31 WOMEN ON THE GIFTS THAT MATTERED MOST, at Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington DC. I'll be talking with contributors to the anthology, Susan Stamberg and Eleanor Clift, about their essays - both about jewelry from their mothers - and about mothers, daughters, looking backwards, looking forwards, National Public Radio (Susan was a founding mother of NPR), Newsweek and the Daily Beast (where Eleanor works), and maybe even the news of the day.

The 12 Steps & Beyond

1. We admitted we were powerless over literature-that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than our humdrum lives could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our book shelves and e-readers over to the care of Book Lust as we understood it.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of our bookshelves, our closets, and our e-readers.
5. Admitted to Goodreads, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our obsession.
6-12. And so on.

Speaking of obsessions, it's wonderful to be here among those with similar/identical obsessions - those searching for What to Read Next, What to Recommend, maybe even What to Write.

These days, I'm bouncing between projects, or is it "among" projects, since there are more than two?

1. Working on a novel I started 3 or 4 times over the years, kept putting aside in frustration, and looked at a few months ago and saw something I thought I could work with. (Lesson here: never throw anything out!)

2. Gearing up to promote my new anthology, What My Mother Gave Me: 31 Women on the Gifts That Mattered Most, pub date April 2. It's been a joy to work on this book with so many fabulous writers, so many fabulous essays, and a subject that touches all of us: an emblematic gift from our mothers that opens up into the entire relationship. I'll be doing readings, panels, and brunches in the period leading up to Mother's Day, at venues near and far. Check back in for details.

In the next few weeks, I'll post links here to several of the essays that have already been published early in magazines, so you get a flavor of what's to come.

3. On Sat. March 9, I'm chairing a panel at the AWP in Boston called "Art vs. Commerce: Writing for Love and Money," from 3:00 p.m. to 4:15 p.m. My fellow panelists are 3 men named Steve and Maud Newton: Steve Almond, Stephen Elliott, and Stephen McCauley. My first question to them will be: Do you write for love or money?

Hope to see you there, or here.
~~ Liz