Cinthia Ritchie's Blog

It’s here. The big day. My memoir, the one I spent 15 years struggling over, launches today from Raised Voice Press.

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I’m feeling very exposed, very vulnerable. This is not at all similar to when Dolls Behaving Badly launched from Hachette Book Group. That was a novel, and while some of it was based on my life, most of it was fiction. The characters were figments of my imagination. They weren’t real.

Malnourished, on the other hand, is real. It’s the story of my life, and my sister’s...

I had had Alaska writer Dan Walker’s YA novel SECONDHAND SUMMER on my list for a long time, and two weeks ago finally had the chance to dive in.

I wasn’t disappointed.

Walker’s book, geared for middle school readers (but still immensely enjoyable for adults), follows 14-year-old Sam’s move to Anchorage from the small fishing community of Ninilchik after his father dies of a heart attack.

The family, consisting of his mother, an older brother who moves out soon after they arrive in Anchorage,...

First, the good news (good news!!). An early review for MALNOURISHED; A MEMOIR OF SISTERHOOD AND HUNGER came in from Foreword Reviews.

(Here I must pause for a short cheer: Yay for early reviews! Yay for the people putting in the time and effort to carefully read and write about books! Yay for the beauty and agony of it all!)

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Here are some of the tidbits (I’m not sure if I have permission to reprint the entire review):

Elegant prose and intimate details elevate Cinthia Ritchie’s mental...

I love getting packages in the mail, don’t you? I love the mystery of not knowing what’s inside, and even if I know what’s inside, I still love the opening part. Maybe it reminds me of Christmas and that wonder, that thrill.

Whatever the case, a few weeks ago, I received a small package in the mail and when I opened it, I found my contributor’s copy of Hunger: The Best of Brilliant Flash Fiction 2014-2019.

My story ...

Please excuse the jumbled nature of this review: I was up until 6 a.m. last night, finishing Eternity Began Tomorrow.

I literally could not stop reading.

And it wasn’t just the story, which is intriguing, fast-paced and unpredictable (most of the time—I did guess at the ending). It’s that the writing is so smooth and clever that I couldn’t stop myself from reading lines over and over.

Here’s the rundown: Molly “Blazes” Bolan is a young reporter eager to get ahead. She writes for Sedan Chair (I know, a great name, righ...

I just finished reading the late Alaska author Marjorie Kowalski Cole‘s award-winning novel Correcting the Landscape for the second time. And I’m still impressed by the quietness of this book, and how it lulls you in, how it wraps around you in the simplest and yet most secure of ways.

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The book, which won the Bellwether Prize for Fiction (judged by Barbara Kingsolver), takes place in Fairbanks, Alaska, and the winter landscape comes through so clearly that I often had to stop reading to make...

Malnourished: A Memoir of Sisterhood and Hunger, is now available for pre-order:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

IndieBound

The story chronicles my sister’s death from an eating disorder, alongside my own struggles with food, acceptance, approval and love.

Here’s the cover wrap, with blurbs:

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And a small tidbit from the beginning:

Even though I hadn’t been born yet, I still remember my second-oldest sister’s birth, my mother carrying her home from the hospital wrapped in a blue blanket, because she was only the second and my father still had hopes for a...

Malnourished: A Memoir of Sisterhood and Hunger, is available for pre-orders through Raised Voice Press for 20% off through October.

The story chronicles my sister’s death from an eating disorder, alongside my own struggles with food, acceptance, approval and love.

Here’s the cover wrap, with blurbs:

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And a small tidbit from the beginning:

Even though I hadn’t been born yet, I still remember my second-oldest sister’s birth, my mother carrying her home from the hospital wrapped in a blue blank...

Big news: My new book Malnourished: A Memoir of Sisterhood and Hunger, now has a permanent cover.

And I love it. I especially love the vast expanse of sky, which (at least to me) symbolizes death and healing, hope and redemption, all main themes throughout the book.

Anyway, here it is:

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Here’s a brief description:

In Malnourished, Cinthia Ritchie traces the tragedy of her sister’s eating disorder to its beginning—their stepfather’s Pennsylvania farm, where both girls hungered for approval and...

It’s summer in Alaska and we’ve been blessed with freakishly high temperatures, sunny skies and daylight stretching out past midnight. It’s intoxicating and giddy. It’s difficult to stay indoors. It’s so damned awesome.

Except (there’s always an except, isn’t there?) I haven’t been able to do the things I love the most, namely running and writing. I haven’t been procrastinating and I’m not burned-out. I just, you know, did something really stupid.

While I was running, I banged my head on a st...