UP FRONT | SELF
Page Turners Five author-adored books to expand your imagination BY SARA SCHWARTZ
CHARLIE JANE ANDERS
ELIN HILDERBRAND
DANA SPIOTTA
CATHLEEN SCHINE
DIANE WILLIAMS
“Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire rocked my world. This book will make you look at classic fantasy tales and fables a whole new way, and its unique characters might just take up permanent residence in your head. What do you do after you come home from a fantasy world? Turns out there’s a special school for that.”
“One of the books that brightened up the winter of 2016 for me was Janice Y.K. Lee’s novel The Expatriates. I loved Lee’s novel The Piano Teacher, about Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation, but I enjoyed this contemporary tale of Americans living in Hong Kong even more. Writing about an exotic, unfamiliar world is one thing, but what I adored was the gripping storyline and the compelling characters.”
“I could not put down Marisa Silver’s new book, Little Nothing. It is a wild, witty and mesmerizing tale that plays with the dissidence of bodies and the transcendence of longing. Marisa Silver writes beautiful, seductive prose that always manages to be both wise and fleet; her inventive, weirdly romantic novel is compassionate and moving in wonderfully surprising ways.”
“I picked up The Sport of Kings thinking it was a novel about horse racing and discovered one of the most astonishing writers I’ve read in many years. The wild beauty, searing intelligence and wrenching empathy of C.E. Morgan’s prose is breathtaking. This novel, about racing and race and the history of our country, is simply a masterpiece.”
“I keep a photo portrait on my writing desk of a young, but aged, Iris Murdoch. She implores me to keep working. She is on her knees on the floor in front of a rumpled bed. She is rumpled. Her expression is feral and determined or is that gentleness, wisdom and pain that I see? I had to have Living on Paper: Letters From Iris Murdoch 1934-1995, edited by Avril Horner and Anne Rowe.”
– Anders is the author of multiple short stories and two novels, including her most recent, All the Birds in the Sky
– Hilderbrand is the author of 20 books, including her most recent, Winter Storms
– Spiotta is the author of four books, including her most recent, Innocents and Others
– Schine is the author of 10 books, including her most recent, They May Not Mean To, But They Do
– Williams is the author of eight books, including her most recent, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine
THNKSTOCK; TRISTAN CRANE; NINA SUBIN; JESSICA MARX; KAREN TAPIA; BILL HAYWARD; BOOKS COURTESY OF THE PUBLISHERS
It’s no secret that to be a great writer, you need to be a great reader. We reached out to some female authors with newly published books to hear what they’ve loved reading recently.