Julia Fierro's Blog: Author of The Gypsy Moth Summer and Cutting Teeth - Posts Tagged "julia-fierro"

It was so much fun chatting with Brooklyn Magazine's Kristin Iversen about my novel, Cutting Teeth, The Sackett Street Writers' Workshop, Brooklyn's "lit renaissance", writing, reading and more.

http://www.bkmag.com/BrooklynAbridged...

"Writing, reading, talking about writing and reading—this is how many of us practice our humanity."

I'm honored to be this week's subject at the PEN 10 interview series for PEN American Center, curated by Lauren Cerand.

http://www.pen.org/interview/pen-ten-...

"Beyond being the driving force behind Sackett Street, Fierro is a huge part of Brooklyn’s lit community and serves as an advocate for work (including from Sackett teachers and students) that she believes in. And she will soon have her own work to promote, with her first novel, Cutting Teeth, forthcoming from St. Martin’s Press in 2014. Fierro laughs and says, “I’m a writer! I’m actually really good at it!” But she has no desire to stop teaching. “There’s no experience when I’m more in the moment. There’s nothing I feel more confident about than talking about craft and the reader. Talking about the reader is as close to religion as I get.”

http://www.bkmag.com/BrooklynAbridged...

Brain Pickings has long been one of my favorite sources for inspiration—every post informing and revealing.

This part made me gleefully dizzy:
"Pair with E. B. White on the responsibility of the writer."

Thank you to Lauren Cerand for the thought-provoking questions, and to PEN American Center for their generous support of writers.

http://explore.noodle.org/post/621515...

And I'm grateful to Andrew Sullivan's THE DISH for, once again, sharing the interview.

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/0...

My debut novel, Cutting Teeth, will be released by St. Martin's Press on May 13th, 2014, but the novel can be preordered now!
I dropped off the final-final edits last week (no feeling can compare), the cover is finished and soon to be revealed, and I am feeling immensely grateful for my editor and the team at St. Martin's Press, and to all who have already pre-ordered the novel.

All you early birds can preorder via the following links:
Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Powell's City of Books

Indiebound


I love preordering books, and tend to do it in bunches late at night. On occasion, I accidentally preorder two copies of the same book, which means I have a book to gift one of my students, a fellow writer, or a favorite reader. You can have too much of a good thing...but too many books, no way.

It's an honor to be included in this thought-provoking article on sexism in the literary world along with four seriously brilliant writers (who also have a great sense of humor) Roxane Gay, Adelle Waldman, Lydia Millet & Ayelet Waldman.

Big thanks to Orli Van Mourik and Brooklyn Based.

And it was fun to give a shout-out to a few great supporters of gender equality in literature, including Rob Spillman, Elissa Schappell, Laura Miller, Michelle Dean, and VIDA: Women in Literary Arts!

http://brooklynbased.com/blog/2013/11... — with Sackett Street Writers.

Friends have asked where they can preorder my novel (out in May) via an independent bookstore. Signed copies of Cutting Teeth are available for preorder through the amazing Brooklyn indie bookstore, WORD!

I’m honored to be on WORD’s author page with some of my own favorite authors, like Emma Straub, Jennifer Gilmore, Jami Attenberg, Julie Klam, Kate Christensen and more.

Books can be signed to a particular person, just leave a comment with instructions when ordering. Books shipped via UPS Ground and USPS Priority Mail.

Shockingly, I’ve never autographed anything, unless 8th grade autograph books count.
I’ll start practicing.

Thank you to Eric Nelson for mentioning Cutting Teeth as a “book to look out for in 2014” over at Vol. 1 Brooklyn.

http://www.vol1brooklyn.com/2013/12/1...

Eric is a fantastic writer, reader, literary citizen and lit-supporter, so the mention means a lot!
Check out all his 2013 favorites (books, journals, presses, websites, peeps), and his 2014 list, which includes Courtney Maum’s I Am Having So Much Fun Without You, which I’m also looking forward to.

http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/one...

My responses on how NOT writing can turn out be a good thing; confessions of my many one-night-stands with novels; writing while working; writing while parenting; self-loathing; motivation; sharing your work, and the ways I tricked myself into not giving up in the 10+ years it took me to reach publication.
Thank you to Rebecca Meacham for the inspiring questions.
My favorite: "So not-writing can actually be good for writing a novel?"
Make sure to check out the great interviews with other novelists, including Dean Bakopoulos, Allison Lynn and Celeste Ng, and wisdom from Cristina Henriquez, Rebecca Land Soodak, Leah Stewart, and Ploughshares’ blog editor Andrew Ladd.

I'm thrilled about Cutting Teeth making The Millions "Most Anticipated 2014 Book" preview, the very list I turn to each year right before I make my must-read lists and go on a preorder binge.

http://www.themillions.com/2014/01/mo...

And my novel is in fine company, with books by so many of my favorite writers (some I've loved since I was a girl), favorite colleagues, Sackett Street writers, and friends, including Rachel Cantor, Kyle Minor, Roxane Gay, Yiyun Li, Molly Antopol, Susan Minot, Gina Frangello, Adam Wilson, Ayelet Waldman, Elizabeth McCracken, Emma Donoghue, Mona Simpson, Anna Solomon, Eleanor Henderson, Edan Lepucki, Emma Fusco-Straub, Cristina Henriquez, Stuart Dybek, Emily Gould, Josh Weil, and more.

I'm over the moon.

I like what The Millions has to say about Cutting Teeth, especially since I just found my advanced copy in the bin holding my kids' picture books. Not sure how it got there...

"When a group of thirty-something parents gather at a ramshackle beach house called Eden, no serpent is required for the sins, carnal and otherwise, to pile up. Fierro, founder of Brooklyn’s Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop, argued in The Millions last year that writers need to put the steam—and the human sentiment—back into sex scenes in literary novels. You may want to keep Fierro’s debut novel on a high shelf, away from children and prudish literary snobs."