We were thrilled to welcome a powerhouse of contemporary American writing, celebrated author and editor Jill Bialosky, for a conversation on her new novel, The Deceptions. With six poetry collections, three novels, and two memoirs already to her name, it’s no wonder that The Deceptions is a celebration of the blurred lines between genre, joining art, myth, beautiful poetics, and exhilarating plot to create an explosive and provocative exploration of female sexuality and ambition.
Novelist Lan Samantha Chang (The Family Chao) joined Jill Bialosky for a discussion of the craft, imagination, intellect, and experience necessary to engage readers.
Featured Book
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The Deceptions
By Jill Bialosky
Published by Counterpoint Press
Something terrible has happened and I don’t know what to do. An unnamed narrator’s life is unraveling. Her only child has left home, and her twenty-year marriage is strained. Anticipation about her soon-to-be-released book of poetry looms. She seeks answers to the paradoxes of love, desire, and parenthood among the Greek and Roman gods at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As she passes her days teaching at a boys’ prep school, spending her off-hours sequestered in the museum’s austere galleries, she is haunted by memories of a yearlong friendship with a colleague, a fellow poet struggling with his craft. As secret betrayals and deceptions come to light and rage threatens to overwhelm her, the pantheon of gods assume remarkably vivid lives of their own, forcing her to choose between reality and myth in an effort to free herself from the patriarchal constraints of the past and embrace a new vision for her future.
The Deceptions is a page-turning and seductively told exploration of female sexuality and ambition as well as a human drama that dares to test the stories we tell ourselves. It is also a brilliant investigation of a life caught between the dueling magnetic poles of privacy and its appropriation in art and literature. Celebrated poet, memoirist, and novelist Jill Bialosky has reached new and daring heights in her boldest work yet.
In conversation
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Jill Bialosky
Jill Bialosky
Jill Bialosky is the author of six acclaimed collections of poetry, three critically acclaimed novels, and two memoirs, including History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life, a New York Times bestseller. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Best American Poetry; the New Yorker; the Atlantic; Harper’s magazine; O, The Oprah Magazine; the Kenyon Review; Harvard Review; and the Paris Review, among other publications. She is executive editor and vice president at W. W. Norton & Company. Her work has been a finalist for the James Laughlin Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, and the Books for a Better Life Awards. In 2014, she was honored by the Poetry Society of America for her distinguished contribution to poetry. She lives in New York City.
Photo Credit: Beowulf Sheehan
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Lan Samantha Chang
Lan Samantha Chang
Lan Samantha Chang is the author of The Family Chao. Her other works include the award-winning Hunger: A Novella and Stories and the novels Inheritance and All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost. A recent Berlin Prize winner, she is the recipient of fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute, the NEA, and the Guggenheim Fellowship. She is the director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
