Lucy Ferriss - Reading, Writing, and Fellowship

With Rilla Askew and Mary Kay Zuravleff at the Authors Guild Gala

Read Past Newsletters

"Ferriss strikes the perfect balance between the global and the personal." -- Ivy Pochoda, author of These Women

Selected Works

Christina Stead's "The Man Who Loved Children"

"Lucy Ferriss brings her signature honesty, clarity, and grace to bear on Christina Stead's famously challenging and rewarding novel about the frightening misuses of paternal power. I happily followed her into such literary byways as what to do with "impossible" characters (in books and in life), the virtues and pitfalls of excess in fiction, and how writing can sometimes save our souls. Through it all, Ferriss reckons with her own late father and his influence on her emerging artist's vision. This is a beautiful blend of memoir and deep reading."—Pamela Erens

Essays

Meditations for a New Century

"Lucy Ferriss's modern-day meditations are harrowing, whimsical, elegant, and probing. These beautifully composed pieces are small miracles of the essayist's art, and few writers at work today are as deft as Ferriss at finding wonder and meaning in the ordinary, the overlooked, the unusual, and the familiar." --Sudip Bose, American Scholar

Fiction

The Misconceiver

The Misconceiver is a startling novel in ways that highlight how unsurprising most pro-choice novels are. Ferriss isn't interested in merely confirming our liberal ideals; she makes us work for them. . . . The novel offers a challenging exploration of one woman's struggle to work through the profound moral dilemmas of her life. -- Ron Charles, The Washington Post

Foreign Climes

"The geographic breadth of Foreign Climes is only the beginning of its power. What makes the collection stunning is Ferriss's ability to go deep inside her characters, to the hidden places where we are foreign to those closest to us and even to ourselves, inviting profound reckoning." -- Dawn Raffel, author of The Strange Case of Dr. Couney

A Sister to Honor

"As ineluctable as a Greek tragedy." -- Claire Messud, author of The Woman Upstairs

The Lost Daughter

"From its harrowing prologue to its final sentences, I was emotionally engaged with this fine novel. Ferriss is a masterful storyteller." —Wally Lamb, author of I Know This Much Is True

Memoir

Unveiling the Prophet

"Ferriss’s exploration of St. Louis’s Veiled Prophet Ball is a must read. . . . This is one of the best books of the year."

-- Riverfront Times

Reading, Writing, and Fellowship

Ig Publishing, September 2023

May 14, 2023

For me, summer has become a time for gatherings. Maybe this began with Covid, when we became so reluctant to throng indoors. Or maybe it began when Don and I bought a little place at the edge of the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, beside a spring-fed lake, where we see our neighbors by (and on) the water or at Tanglewood or Jacobs Pillow. We've taken to booking our downstairs guest quarters to the point where the sheets grow threadbare from the washing and changing, and the house and lakefront echo with guests, their children and dogs.

Summer for me, then, doesn't exactly become a time when I put away the new novel project or stop tapping aimlessly at the keyboard, but the creative life becomes a distinctly early-morning affair, performed in bathrobe with coffee staining my teeth. It also becomes itself a time of community, which began this year with the Authors Guild gala, a splendiferous affair held at the Plaza in NYC—usually a venue too rich for my taste, but this year I had a special reason to go. The Guild was honoring Roxana Robinson, who has done yeoman's work in promoting other women fiction writers, bringing us together, helping us all remember that literary success is not a zero-sum game. We managed to organize two full tables of Word of Mouth members to cheer for Roxana and bond amongst ourselves. I also felt community among engaged, intense readers when I spoke earlier to Hartford's Saturday Morning Club (which meets, naturally, on weekday evenings). Later this month, I'll be joining my immensely talented colleague Ethan Rutherford to read short fiction at the West Hartford Library, and later this summer I'll get to join forces with Rickie Solinger, Jennifer Haigh, and others to share our work.

Not to mention the sense of being part of a community that I get when kind writers blurb my book. Blurbing is among the most painful of tasks for writers, as too many of us know. Asking for a blurb, you cringe deep inside, all the way through your gut. Being asked for a blurb, you always feel obligated, late, and inadequate to the task. And yet comments from other authors have become part of the standard packaging of books; publishers expect you to do it. So it comes as a relief, a surprise, and a sense of being hugged by words when generous comments flow in—in this case, for my forthcoming book on Christina Stead. Stead is one of those authors you've vaguely heard of, and when you learn that she's best known for a vicious, over-the-top, heartrending and often disgusting 500+-page book called The Man Who Loved Children . . . well, I don't blame anyone for passing. But I was given the challenging task of responding personally and even autobiographically, and at book length (!) to a novel of my choice, and I chose that one. If you buy the book when it comes out, you'll learn why. I wonder if anyone on this list has read The Man Who Loved Children, and if so, how you have come to feel about it. Or do you have other books, or films, that have crawled under your skin and helped define who you are?

May this summer bring community and hugs to all of you.

Best,

Lucy