I had so much fun interviewing Laura van den Berg at
The Baltimore Fishbowl, and I'm even more excited to host her and fellow writer Katharine Noel at
Starts Here! (
An Ivy Bookshop reading series; January 7th, 7 pm, Artifact Coffee). Laura's second collection of fiction,
The Isle of Youth (FSG), a collection of "lost" narrators in often-exotic vistas, is fantastic. Although she is unsentimental, there is a particularly sensitivity to her stories that devastates. Each word has the weight and height of a water balloon and bruises your heart like a brick. So what is Laura's isle of youth?
A place where Law & Order is on every single channel day and night and where there is an infinite supply of red wine and gourmet tacos and good, weird books.
I actually think each story is its own kind of “isle”—a place where I go to at once get away from something and to discover something that surprises me.
To read more of the interview, go
here. For more information on the reading, go
here.
