On this Lit Show, Leslie Jamison discusses The Gin Closet, which was released in February by the Free Press.
The book, Jamison’s debut novel, tells the story of two women: Stella, a young and disenchanted New York college graduate, and Tillie, her estranged and troubled aunt, whose very existence the family has denied for decades. The resulting novel, writes Charles D’Ambrosio, is a “tale of women caught in a chaos of drives and desires, seeking new meaning in our most ancient relations. With the elemental lines of a tragedy, the body itself becomes a terrain of disputed personal history, the body as it rebels and suffers and loves across generations.”
Jamison’s previous work has been featured in Best New American Voices 2008, A Public Space, Black Warrior Review, and others. She’s a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and is currently a pursuing a PhD in literature at Yale University.
Complete Show (Download podcast)
Show Excerpts
Part 1: Varieties of pain, wounds and woundedness in The Gin Closet.
Part 2: Altruism, selfishness, and the rescue personality; making use of personal history in fiction; The Gin Closet‘s refrains; writing the novel’s two voices; narrative foreground and the backdrop of tragedy.
Part 3: Leslie Jamison reads from the opening of her novel.
Part 4: Acquisition and agents for first-time novelists; the author’s creative and scholarly selves; and upcoming work.
