Nada by Jennifer Prado
I'm pleased to announce that my short story about Sao Paulo, Nada, is now appearing in the June 2009 issue of Acentos Review.
Acentos Review - June 2009
Nada by Jennifer Prado
EMERGE - New Authors
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Monday, June 01, 2009
I won an award!
Actually, it's a very kind nomination from a fellow author and email friend, Jo Ann Hernandez who is the Producer of BronzeWord Latino Authors and author of White Bread Competition and The Throwaway Piece.
Now is the fun part, I get to nominate ten authors who also deserve the Sisterhood Award.
The rest of the rules for the winners:
1. Put the logo on your blog or post.
2. Nominate at least 10 blogs which show great attitude and/or gratitude!
3. Be sure to link to your nominees within your post.
4. Let them know that they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
5. Share the love and link to this post and to the person from whom you received your award.
I shall now pass the Sisterhood Award on to the following ten female bloggers I admire (sorry guys, this is a VERY sexist award, so you can have the remote control for the rest of the week.)
Jennifer Prado's Sisterhood Nominations:
1) Justine Musk (for being brutally honest and having a fascinating life.)
Justine Musk, Writing to Music
2) Margo Candela (for being very straight-forward and having a great sense of humor.)
Margo Candela
3) Jackson Pearce (for the YouTube rant in glasses, holding a pipe, affecting a bookish accent, and making your case for YA books.)
Watch Me Be
4) Stephanie Anagnoson (for consistently being Ms. Theology, while I inconsistently want to be Ms. Detonator.)
Surviving the Workday
5)Anne Elliot (for being a huge supporter of author readings in NYC, a friend to feral cats, and having a blog title that sometimes scares me.)
Ass Backwords
6)Carol Novack (for being a die-hard Mad Hatter Publisher and all around literary go-getter.)
Carol Novack
7)Phoebe Kate Foster (for making me an honorary Southerner when I told you how much I like my greens.)
Phoebe Kate
8)Felicia Sullivan (for being strong and fragile simultaneously and knocking the ball way out of the park in your memoir.)
Felicia
9)Lindsay Ferrier (for having a blog name and photo that make me laugh each time I read your posts: Suburban Turmoil - Wiping Ass and Taking Names.)
Lindsay
10)Amy Kohut (for being my long lost high school friend, reconnected via Email, and in celebration of her artistic talent and our soul sistahood.)
Hooray for Little A
Enjoy your Sisterhood Award.
I did!
Best wishes,
Jennifer
Actually, it's a very kind nomination from a fellow author and email friend, Jo Ann Hernandez who is the Producer of BronzeWord Latino Authors and author of White Bread Competition and The Throwaway Piece.
Now is the fun part, I get to nominate ten authors who also deserve the Sisterhood Award.
The rest of the rules for the winners:
1. Put the logo on your blog or post.
2. Nominate at least 10 blogs which show great attitude and/or gratitude!
3. Be sure to link to your nominees within your post.
4. Let them know that they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
5. Share the love and link to this post and to the person from whom you received your award.
I shall now pass the Sisterhood Award on to the following ten female bloggers I admire (sorry guys, this is a VERY sexist award, so you can have the remote control for the rest of the week.)
Jennifer Prado's Sisterhood Nominations:
1) Justine Musk (for being brutally honest and having a fascinating life.)
Justine Musk, Writing to Music
2) Margo Candela (for being very straight-forward and having a great sense of humor.)
Margo Candela
3) Jackson Pearce (for the YouTube rant in glasses, holding a pipe, affecting a bookish accent, and making your case for YA books.)
Watch Me Be
4) Stephanie Anagnoson (for consistently being Ms. Theology, while I inconsistently want to be Ms. Detonator.)
Surviving the Workday
5)Anne Elliot (for being a huge supporter of author readings in NYC, a friend to feral cats, and having a blog title that sometimes scares me.)
Ass Backwords
6)Carol Novack (for being a die-hard Mad Hatter Publisher and all around literary go-getter.)
Carol Novack
7)Phoebe Kate Foster (for making me an honorary Southerner when I told you how much I like my greens.)
Phoebe Kate
8)Felicia Sullivan (for being strong and fragile simultaneously and knocking the ball way out of the park in your memoir.)
Felicia
9)Lindsay Ferrier (for having a blog name and photo that make me laugh each time I read your posts: Suburban Turmoil - Wiping Ass and Taking Names.)
Lindsay
10)Amy Kohut (for being my long lost high school friend, reconnected via Email, and in celebration of her artistic talent and our soul sistahood.)
Hooray for Little A
Enjoy your Sisterhood Award.
I did!
Best wishes,
Jennifer
Monday, May 11, 2009
Author Interview - Lily Koppel
The Red Leather Diary
Harper Perennial
Harper Collins Website
Paperback published: January 20, 2009
Where to Buy:
On Amazon
Author's Websites:
Lily Koppel
Red Leather Diary Website
Lily Koppel's Interview on YouTube
Synopsis:
Lily Koppel, a young Barnard graduate and celebrity reporter for the New York Times, passes by a dumpster filled with relics from New York City's rapidly fading past. One of the treasures Koppel discovers is a curious, red leather diary.
Opening the tarnished brass lock, Koppel embarks on a journey into the past, traveling to a New York in which women of privilege meet for tea at Schrafft's, dance at the Hotel Pennsylvania, and toast the night at El Morocco. Koppel is captivated by the headstrong young woman whose intimate thoughts and emotions fill the pale blue lines. Who was this lonely ingenue who adored the works of Baudelaire and Jane Austen, who was sexually curious beyond her years, who traveled to Paris, London, and Rome, where she had a romance with an Italian count?
A chance phone call from a private investigator leads Koppel to Florence, a ninety-year old woman living with her husband of sixty-seven years in Florida. Reunited with her diary, Florence journeys back to the girl she once was, rediscovering a lost self that had burned with artistic fervor.
Reviews:
From the New York Times Book Review:
A window into an extraordinary life. With her skillful reporting, fine prose and excellent eye for period detail, Koppel has given it a lovely shine, especially since she miraculously managed to track down and befriend—Wolfson, who is now in her 90s…A story about not one but two lovable characters—and the city that brought them together.
From Parade:
A world straight from the pages of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel…The Red Leather Diary is Koppel’s tribute to both the tempestuous girl she came to know on paper and the older, more even-tempered woman she grew to love in real life. It’s an extraordinary story about coming of age, following your dreams and discovering (or rediscovering) who you are, were and want to be.
From Booklist:
In 2003, Koppel, a novice writer for the New York Times, stumbled upon an amazing discovery: the decades-old diary of a privileged teenaged Manhattanite penned between 1929 and 1934. Fascinated by entries detailing theater expeditions, shopping sprees, love interests, and grand ambitions, she put her journalistic skills to good use, tracking down the original owner of this faded and cracked red-leather treasure. Elated to discover 90-year-old Florence Wolfson alive, alert, and eager to share her memories of a bygone time and place, Koppel began interviewing Florence, interweaving the brief diary entries with more detailed personal anecdotes infused with the type of glamour and sophistication associated with a 1930s romantic comedy. After a front-page story appeared in the New York Times Sunday City section, interest in Florence’s fascinating story prompted the author to write a full-length book that works as both a biography and a spellbinding glimpse into a vanished era.
--Margaret Flanagan
Author Interview:
Q: Lily, I have to ask, because I have an irrational fear of dumpsters. What gave you the courage to climb in and discover the diary that became the inspiration for your article in the New York Times and this subsequent book project?
A: Curious by nature, I’ve never been able to resist adventure and have also been curious about the stories people and especially old objects have to tell. So, when I stepped outside of my Manhattan apartment building and discovered a rusted red dumpster brimming with old steamer trunks that had once traveled on ocean liners, I felt as if I had found a message in a bottle. Ballet flats on my toes, I climbed and like Alice tumbled down the rabbit hole into a glamorous forgotten world.
Q: When I watched your lovely and moving, YouTube book trailer, I was also impressed by something you have commented on in another interview. You bear a striking physical resemblance to photos of the diary's author, Florence Wolfson (Howitt), as a young woman. Do you believe in literary reincarnation?
A: Literary reincarnation, perhaps. Among the flapper dresses, old scalloped-edged photographs, an entire collection of vintage handbags and a coat from tangerine bouclé coat from Bergdorf’s (which I now wear), I found a crumbling red leather diary among the trunks—kept by a young woman named Florence Wolfson from 1929 to 1934—it was like finding a missing puzzle piece of my own life. Although the young woman of the diary and I were separated by three quarters of a century, we were on parallel paths, both living in New York (hers sepia toned, mine the digital age.) Florence and I were searching for love and meaning in our lives. We were both painters and writers.
I believe Florence and I wrote our way to each other. Florence in the 1930s confiding her innermost thoughts to her diary’s pages (her love affairs with men and women, her obsession with a famous stage actress, the literary salon she hosted with prominent poets of the era…) Then, me years later, taking that imaginative leap into the dumpster and the past.
Q: I was also struck by the immediate bond and ensuing friendship that was formed between you and Florence. Can you talk more about the impact that this relationship had in your life and career?
A: When I first met Florence at 90, unexpectedly glamorous, she hugged me. As she writes in the foreword to my non-fiction book, The Red Leather Diary, “What does it feel like when a forgotten chunk of your life is handed back to you?” She turned to me and said, “You brought back my life.”
For Florence, the diary is a second act at 90. For me, the experience has inspired me to never give up on writing and art, but also has made me recognize the art inherent in everyday and only seemingly “ordinary” lives. The Red Leather Diary is a fairy tale, but it’s also about the significance of all of our lives and the vital importance of living authentically and of always peering beyond the surface of people and things.
Q: I'm interested in hearing more about how you have been marketing and promoting your book. You seem to be having a great deal of success with book clubs, especially those with a mother-daughter theme. Are you also visiting schools to encourage young people of the digital age to return to diary writing? Can you talk about how you plan your week to fit your book events into your busy schedule?
A: From the very beginning when I climbed into the dumpster, I felt the story of The Red Leather Diary was an important one to tell. I have been on a mission to share the diary with the world as has Florence who often speaks about the book to audiences with me.
The book has an audience from teens to readers in their 90s and beyond, from Facebook to Florence’s contemporaries. Mothers, daughters, grandmothers…and men (who especially like the private eye who helped me track down Florence three years after I found the diary) have spread the word. People of all ages see themselves in the story, treating it as a window into their inner worlds.
Oh, and how do I fit it in my schedule? Magic…travel, writing, planes, laptops, diaries, blogs…all have become a beautiful blur and part of the continuing journey of The Red Leather Diary.
Q: What is next, Lily? Another reviewer mentioned that your book reads like a movie. I've already decided I'm going to send your book to my grandmother. Can we hope to see the story on the big screen some day?
A: The movie would be a dream come true. I am at work on my next book.
Thank you, Lily Koppel, for participating in this week's interview with EMERGE - New Authors. Best of luck for your continued and well-deserved success with The Red Leather Diary and your new writing project.
The Red Leather Diary
Harper Perennial
Harper Collins Website
Paperback published: January 20, 2009
Where to Buy:
On Amazon
Author's Websites:
Lily Koppel
Red Leather Diary Website
Lily Koppel's Interview on YouTube
Synopsis:
Lily Koppel, a young Barnard graduate and celebrity reporter for the New York Times, passes by a dumpster filled with relics from New York City's rapidly fading past. One of the treasures Koppel discovers is a curious, red leather diary.
Opening the tarnished brass lock, Koppel embarks on a journey into the past, traveling to a New York in which women of privilege meet for tea at Schrafft's, dance at the Hotel Pennsylvania, and toast the night at El Morocco. Koppel is captivated by the headstrong young woman whose intimate thoughts and emotions fill the pale blue lines. Who was this lonely ingenue who adored the works of Baudelaire and Jane Austen, who was sexually curious beyond her years, who traveled to Paris, London, and Rome, where she had a romance with an Italian count?
A chance phone call from a private investigator leads Koppel to Florence, a ninety-year old woman living with her husband of sixty-seven years in Florida. Reunited with her diary, Florence journeys back to the girl she once was, rediscovering a lost self that had burned with artistic fervor.
Reviews:
From the New York Times Book Review:
A window into an extraordinary life. With her skillful reporting, fine prose and excellent eye for period detail, Koppel has given it a lovely shine, especially since she miraculously managed to track down and befriend—Wolfson, who is now in her 90s…A story about not one but two lovable characters—and the city that brought them together.
From Parade:
A world straight from the pages of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel…The Red Leather Diary is Koppel’s tribute to both the tempestuous girl she came to know on paper and the older, more even-tempered woman she grew to love in real life. It’s an extraordinary story about coming of age, following your dreams and discovering (or rediscovering) who you are, were and want to be.
From Booklist:
In 2003, Koppel, a novice writer for the New York Times, stumbled upon an amazing discovery: the decades-old diary of a privileged teenaged Manhattanite penned between 1929 and 1934. Fascinated by entries detailing theater expeditions, shopping sprees, love interests, and grand ambitions, she put her journalistic skills to good use, tracking down the original owner of this faded and cracked red-leather treasure. Elated to discover 90-year-old Florence Wolfson alive, alert, and eager to share her memories of a bygone time and place, Koppel began interviewing Florence, interweaving the brief diary entries with more detailed personal anecdotes infused with the type of glamour and sophistication associated with a 1930s romantic comedy. After a front-page story appeared in the New York Times Sunday City section, interest in Florence’s fascinating story prompted the author to write a full-length book that works as both a biography and a spellbinding glimpse into a vanished era.
--Margaret Flanagan
Author Interview:
Q: Lily, I have to ask, because I have an irrational fear of dumpsters. What gave you the courage to climb in and discover the diary that became the inspiration for your article in the New York Times and this subsequent book project?
A: Curious by nature, I’ve never been able to resist adventure and have also been curious about the stories people and especially old objects have to tell. So, when I stepped outside of my Manhattan apartment building and discovered a rusted red dumpster brimming with old steamer trunks that had once traveled on ocean liners, I felt as if I had found a message in a bottle. Ballet flats on my toes, I climbed and like Alice tumbled down the rabbit hole into a glamorous forgotten world.
Q: When I watched your lovely and moving, YouTube book trailer, I was also impressed by something you have commented on in another interview. You bear a striking physical resemblance to photos of the diary's author, Florence Wolfson (Howitt), as a young woman. Do you believe in literary reincarnation?
A: Literary reincarnation, perhaps. Among the flapper dresses, old scalloped-edged photographs, an entire collection of vintage handbags and a coat from tangerine bouclé coat from Bergdorf’s (which I now wear), I found a crumbling red leather diary among the trunks—kept by a young woman named Florence Wolfson from 1929 to 1934—it was like finding a missing puzzle piece of my own life. Although the young woman of the diary and I were separated by three quarters of a century, we were on parallel paths, both living in New York (hers sepia toned, mine the digital age.) Florence and I were searching for love and meaning in our lives. We were both painters and writers.
I believe Florence and I wrote our way to each other. Florence in the 1930s confiding her innermost thoughts to her diary’s pages (her love affairs with men and women, her obsession with a famous stage actress, the literary salon she hosted with prominent poets of the era…) Then, me years later, taking that imaginative leap into the dumpster and the past.
Q: I was also struck by the immediate bond and ensuing friendship that was formed between you and Florence. Can you talk more about the impact that this relationship had in your life and career?
A: When I first met Florence at 90, unexpectedly glamorous, she hugged me. As she writes in the foreword to my non-fiction book, The Red Leather Diary, “What does it feel like when a forgotten chunk of your life is handed back to you?” She turned to me and said, “You brought back my life.”
For Florence, the diary is a second act at 90. For me, the experience has inspired me to never give up on writing and art, but also has made me recognize the art inherent in everyday and only seemingly “ordinary” lives. The Red Leather Diary is a fairy tale, but it’s also about the significance of all of our lives and the vital importance of living authentically and of always peering beyond the surface of people and things.
Q: I'm interested in hearing more about how you have been marketing and promoting your book. You seem to be having a great deal of success with book clubs, especially those with a mother-daughter theme. Are you also visiting schools to encourage young people of the digital age to return to diary writing? Can you talk about how you plan your week to fit your book events into your busy schedule?
A: From the very beginning when I climbed into the dumpster, I felt the story of The Red Leather Diary was an important one to tell. I have been on a mission to share the diary with the world as has Florence who often speaks about the book to audiences with me.
The book has an audience from teens to readers in their 90s and beyond, from Facebook to Florence’s contemporaries. Mothers, daughters, grandmothers…and men (who especially like the private eye who helped me track down Florence three years after I found the diary) have spread the word. People of all ages see themselves in the story, treating it as a window into their inner worlds.
Oh, and how do I fit it in my schedule? Magic…travel, writing, planes, laptops, diaries, blogs…all have become a beautiful blur and part of the continuing journey of The Red Leather Diary.
Q: What is next, Lily? Another reviewer mentioned that your book reads like a movie. I've already decided I'm going to send your book to my grandmother. Can we hope to see the story on the big screen some day?
A: The movie would be a dream come true. I am at work on my next book.
Thank you, Lily Koppel, for participating in this week's interview with EMERGE - New Authors. Best of luck for your continued and well-deserved success with The Red Leather Diary and your new writing project.
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