Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Readalikes
Jean Harfenist's first book, A Brief History of The Flood was a Minneapolis Star Tribune Best Book of the Year. She was named a finalist for the Katherine Anne Porter Nimrod/Hartman Award, the Kirkwood Literary Prize, the Missouri Review Editor’s Prize, and the Indiana Review Fiction Prize. Her short stories have appeared in The Missouri Review, The Barcelona Review, Quarterly West, Sycamore Review, Crazyhorse, Sonora Review, Wisconsin Review, The Sun, and the Cream City Review. She is a native of Minnesota, a graduate of New York University, and now lives in Santa Barbara with her husband.
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A Conversation with Jean Harfenist, author of A Brief History of the Flood
A Brief History of the Flood is your first collection of short
stories. What inspired you to start writing?
I started to write fiction in 1990 while home on medical leave from an
ad agency, recovering from what had been diagnosed as chronic mononucleosis.
After two years of being nearly bedridden, I had begun to have hours and,
occasionally, entire days of feeling well enough to do something, when one
morning the UCLA Extension catalog slipped from the stack of mail I was reading
in bed. Idly, I flipped through it - and, just as idly, I reached for the phone
and registered for a course called "Writing from the Inner-Self."
I had always been a planner, a lover of flowcharts and methods-time-measurement
studies. This was whim. I wasn't well yet. And I was a businesswoman, not a
writer. This was frivolous. It was silly. But I had to get out of the house; I
had to produce something; and I had exactly nothing to lose. This was a
low-cost, low-threat, no-credit course. Sick people could drop out. Besides, how
difficult could it be to write from the inner-self?
"Snap-fit assembly" is a term describing a manufacturing method in
which ...
Maile Meloy was born in Helena, Montana, in 1972. A Family Daughter is her third book. Her short stories have been published in The New Yorker and The Paris Review. Her first story collection, Half in Love, ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
A Brief History of The Flood
Try:
A Family Daughter
by Maile Meloy
Laura Moriarty was born in Honolulu in 1979. She earned a degree is social work before returning for her M.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Kansas. She was the recipient of the George Bennett Fellowship for ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
A Brief History of The Flood
Try:
The Center of Everything
by Laura Moriarty
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