Sunday, February 18, 2018

Joanne Serling

Joanne Serling’s fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in New Ohio Review and North American Review. She is a graduate of Cornell University and studied and taught fiction at The Writers Studio in New York City. She lives outside of New York with her husband and children.

Serling’s new novel, her debut, is Good Neighbors.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Her reply:
For most of my life, I’ve been a dedicated fiction reader, devouring novels at the rate of one per week with the occasional New Yorker story thrown in. But for the last six months, I’ve been on a nonfiction jag. It started with Boys of my Youth by Jo Ann Beard, a series of interconnected essays that read like short stories. Each one blew me away with their emotional depth and beauty. (And they were funny!) I then dipped into Love and Trouble: a Midlife Reckoning by Claire Dederer, which really got me thinking about how closely our sexual selves are tied to our identity. Dederer is a courageous, honest and also, a very funny writer. In between, I did sneak in one terrific novel: Motherest by Kristen Iskandrian, an insightful and moving debut about motherhood and pregnancy that stayed with me long after I’d finished it.
Visit Joanne Serling's website.

--Marshal Zeringue