Idol Talk: Women Writers on the Teenage Infatuations That Changed Their Lives

by Elizabeth Searle (Editor), Tamra Wilson (Editor)

In the midst of acne, social anxiety and training bras are the teen idols that make adolescent life a little more bearable. Whether their cutouts are plastered on bedroom walls or hidden behind locker doors, there is no denying the impact of these stars on young women. This collection of new essays explores with tenderness and humor the teen crushes of the past 60 years--from Elvis to John Lennon to Whitney Houston--who have influenced the choices of women, romantically or otherwise, well into adulthood.

252 pages, Paperback

Published May 29, 2018

About the author

Elizabeth Searle is the author of two works of theater and four books of fiction: Celebrities In Disgrace, a novella and stories; A Four-Sided Bed, a novel nominated for an American Library Association Book Award; My Body To You, a story collection that won the Iowa Short Fiction Prize; and a forthcoming novel, Girl Held In Home (2011). The New York Times Book Review called her novella Celebrities In Disgrace "a miniature masterpiece."

Elizabeth Searle's and Michael Teoli's Rock Opera, Tonya & Nancy: The Rock Opera - as well as her and Abigail Al-Doory Cross' original opera, Tonya & Nancy: The Opera have drawn worldwide media attention. In May, 2006, at the American Reperatory Theater's "new space for new works," Tufts Music premiered the opera, which is based on the infamous Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan ice scandal. The opera drew coverage from - among other media outlets - the Associated Press, ESPN Hollywood, Sports Illustrated, The New York Times, The London Times, The Daily Show and National Public Radio.

Searle won the 2010 Boston Literary Death Match and the 2000 Lawrence Foundation Fiction Prize. She received her MFA from Brown University, and has taught fiction writing at Brown, Emerson College, Bennington MFA, Stonecoast MFA, and the University of Massachusetts (Visiting Writer, 2007-08). Searle has also served for over a decade on the Executive Board of PEN/New England and founded the Erotic PEN readings.

Searle lives with her husband and son in Arlington, MA.

Reviews

[Breena · Rating 5 out of 5]

IDOL TALK: Women Writers on the Teenage Infatuations That Changed Their Lives edited by Elizabeth Searle and Tamra Wilson is a collection of forty-four essays on the women and men who influenced the mature selves of women writers. These are the figures who guided the writers' growing up. In these delightful essays, the authors are at times lighthearted but are also frank and revealing and aware and descriptive of the zeitgeist of the teen idol era, that time between the end of the World War II up to and including the modern Civil Rights Era. And these idols were, by and large, rebels, visionaries, geniuses, innovators, and damn good lookers. And their looks were important as they were served up on magazine covers and on TV, the medium through which we all came to know a great deal about American culture. Bonus material in IDOL TALK is the “then and now” photos of the writers including glasses, braces and goofy hairdos, the fond, familiar glimpses of their youths. Elizabeth Searle, Tamra Wilson, Darlene R. Taylor, Suzanne Strempek Shea, Kate Kastelein, Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Lee J. Kahrs, Judy Goldman, Nancy Swan, B.A. Shapiro, Michelle Soucy, Amy Rogers, Ann Harleman, Linda K. Sienkiewicz, Janice Eidus, Katharine Davis, Jill McCorkle, Marianne Leone, Susan Lilly, Ann Hood, Lise Haines, Marianne Gingher, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Susan Shapiro, Marjorie Hudson, Morgan Callan Rogers, Leslea Newman, Leslie Lawrence, Katie Hafner, Lisa Williams Kline, Mary Granfield, Leslie Pietrzyk, Susan Woodring, Caitlin McCarthy, Stephanie Powell Watts, Ann Rosenquist Fee, Shara McCallum, Heather Duerre Humann, Lisa Borders, Mary Sullivan, Diana Goetsch, Emlyn Meredith Dornemann and Susan Straight. Wow! They cover a lot of ground.

[Ann Harleman · Rating 5 out of 5]

How do writers’ early passions shape their work (and life? 🙄)... My teen crush on Raymond Burr—evidence here from my high school sketchbook—is a not-so-hidden thread in a lot of my fiction. And not only that, but, reader, I married his lookalike! 👰 Details on my and many other writers’ formative crushes in IDOL TALK, a boundary-breaking 💥anthology edited by Elizabeth Searle & Tamra Wilson. Funny, sad, inspiring.