Elizabeth Benedict's Blog - Posts Tagged "mothers"

Tues. April 9. 7pm. Please join us for the kick-off event for WHAT MY MOTHER GAVE ME: 31 WOMEN ON THE GIFTS THAT MATTERED MOST, at Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington DC. I'll be talking with contributors to the anthology, Susan Stamberg and Eleanor Clift, about their essays - both about jewelry from their mothers - and about mothers, daughters, looking backwards, looking forwards, National Public Radio (Susan was a founding mother of NPR), Newsweek and the Daily Beast (where Eleanor works), and maybe even the news of the day.

Join me this Sunday April 21 at 2pm at the Westport Public Library, talking about mothers, gifts, and what they gave us. My new anthology, WHAT MY MOTHER GAVE ME, with essays by Joyce Carol Oates, Caroline Leavitt, Rita Dove, Elinor Lipman, Emma Straub, Elissa Schappell and many more women, is on the Extended Indie Bestseller List! The event is co-sponsored by the Barnard Alumnae Club of CT!

My grandmother never used to phone me, so when I heard her voice on the phone that night in 1985, I was startled.

"I just read your book," she said sharply, "and I don't like it." She meant my first novel, Slow Dancing, which had recently been published by Knopf and greeted with far more attention than I had expected, "When are you going to write a book your grandmother will like?"

I knew what she meant: the book was filled with sex -- the pre-marital kind -- and references to it, beginning with the opening line. READ THE REST http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabe...Elizabeth Benedict

I was thrilled to learn that Amazon has chosen my new anthology, What My Mother Gave Me: Thirty-one Women on the Gifts That Mattered Most, as one of its top 10 book picks for Mother's Day, along with Lean In, The Interestings, and Life after Life, by Kate Atkinson. Great company! Some of the contributors to the anthology are Joyce Carol Oates, Mary Gordon, Rita Dove, Katha Pollitt, Susan Stamberg, Maud Newton, Lisa See, Karen Karbo, Emma Straub, Elissa Schappell, Elinor Lipman, Mameve Medwed, and Charlotte Silver.

I just learned that our anthology, What My Mother Gave Me: 31 Women on the Gifts That Mattered Most, found its way to #16 on the upcoming NY Times Bestseller list, for paperback nonfiction. We were all a little taken aback, and completely thrilled.

Thanks to everyone here for noticing, for reviewing the book, and for your eloquent and generous comments. This is my favorite one-line review from - of all places - Family Circle magazine: “The complexity and soul-deep connection of the mother-daughter bond is vividly explored in this emotionally eloquent collection of essays.”

Click here to watch our evening at the NY Society Library, talking with editor Elizabeth Benedict, and contributors to WHAT MY MOTHER GAVE ME, Margo Jefferson, Martha McPhee, Roxana Robinson on May 9, 2013.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaQUa0...