Join mid-western writers Michelle Herman and Elissa Washuta for a conversation celebrating Michelle's new novel CLOSE-UP
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Close-Up artfully renders how the lives of a successful young magician and his father, a famous novelist, intertwine with the lives of an aspiring poet, her mother, and the poet’s mentor. In this robust, expansive novel, we follow Jacob, Martin, Caroline, Jeanie, and Jill as they experience rifts and reconciliations, struggling to make sense of themselves and each other. This is a family story only Michelle Herman could write: of missed connections, old grievances, loneliness, longing, and redemption.
Michelle Herman is the author of three previous novels—Missing, Dog, and Devotion—and the novella collection A New and Glorious Life, as well as three essay collections—The Middle of Everything, Stories We Tell Ourselves (longlisted for the 2014 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay), and Like A Song (winner of the 2016 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award)—as well as a book for children, A Girl’s Guide to Life. She has taught creative writing since 1988 at Ohio State, where she also directs a graduate interdisciplinary program in the arts and an all-scholarship summer writing program for teenagers in Columbus, Ohio.
Elissa Washuta is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and a nonfiction writer. She is the author of White Magic, My Body Is a Book of Rules, and Starvation Mode. With Theresa Warburton, she is co-editor of the anthology Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers. She has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Capital, Artist Trust, 4Culture, and Potlatch Fund. Elissa is an assistant professor of creative writing at the Ohio State University.
Close-Up artfully renders how the lives of a successful young magician and his father, a famous novelist, intertwine with the lives of an aspiring poet, her mother, and the poet’s mentor. In this robust, expansive novel, we follow Jacob, Martin, Caroline, Jeanie, and Jill as they experience rifts and reconciliations, struggling to make sense of themselves and each other.
When she was three months old, Michelle Herman's daughter, Grace, went on a hunger strike. At six, she suffered what can only be described, in the old-fashioned way, as a breakdown.
Finalist for the PEN Open Book Award
Longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Award
A TIME, NPR, New York Public Library, Lit Hub, Book Riot, and Entropy Best Book of the Year
“Beguiling and haunting. . . . Washuta's voice sears itself onto the skin.” —The New York Times Book Review
As Elissa Washuta makes the transition from college kid to independent adult, she finds herself overwhelmed by the calamities piling up in her brain. When her mood-stabilizing medications aren’t threatening her life, they’re shoving her from depression to mania and back in the space of an hour.
