Contributor Update: Sloane Crosley

Congratulations to previous contributor Sloane Crosley on her new memoir Grief Is for People. The memoir goes on sale February 27th, 2024 but you can pre-order it from her website here.

Grief Is for People is a deeply moving and surprisingly suspenseful portrait of friendship and a book about loss packed with a verve for life. Sloane Crosley is one of our most renowned observers of contemporary behavior, and now, the pathos that has been ever-present in her trademark wit is on full display. After the pain and confusion of losing her closest friend to suicide, Crosley looks for answers in friends, philosophy, and art, hoping for a framework more useful than the unavoidable stages of grief.

For most of her adult life, Sloane and Russell worked together and played together, as they navigated the corridors of office life, the literary world, and the dramatic cultural shifts in New York City. One day, while Russell is still alive, Sloane’s apartment is broken into. Along with her most prized possessions, the thief makes off with her sense of security, leaving a mystery in its place.

When Russell dies exactly one month later, his suicide propels her on a wild quest to right the unrightable, to explore what constitutes family and possession as the city itself faces the staggering toll brought on by the pandemic.

Crosley’s search for truth is frank, darkly funny, and gilded with a resounding empathy. Upending the “grief memoir,” Grief Is for People is the category-defying story of the struggle to hold on to the past without being consumed by it. A modern elegy, it rises precisely to console and challenge our notions of mourning during these grief-stricken times.

Crosley has received astounding reviews for this piece:

“[An] aching meditation on loss and friendship… Crosley elegantly links the two losses by explaining how her fevered desire to reclaim her burglarized items stood in for her inability to reclaim Russel. Her characteristically whip-smart prose takes on a newly introspective quality as she reinvigorates dusty publishing memoir tropes and captures the minutiae of a complicated friendship with humor and heart. This is a must-read.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Novelist and essayist Crosley is a tightrope writer of devastating wit and plain devastation, a balancing act no doubt requiring even more muscle in this memoir of her grief…Also a story of the shifting sands of the last two decades in book publishing and the author’s and her friend’s changing places within it, this is a searching, impassioned, cathartic, and loving elegy.”

—Booklist

Sloane Crosley is the author of The New York Times bestselling essay collections, I Was Told There’d Be Cake (a 2009 finalist for The Thurber Prize for American Humor) and How Did You Get This Number, as well as Look Alive Out There (a 2019 finalist for The Thurber Prize for American Humor) and the bestselling novels, The Clasp and Cult Classic. She served as editor of The Best American Travel Writing series and is featured in The Library of America’s 50 Funniest American Writers, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Phillip Lopate’s The Contemporary American Essay and others. She was the inaugural columnist for The New York Times Op-Ed “Townies” series, a contributing editor at Interview Magazine, and a columnist for The Village Voice, Vanity Fair, The Independent, Black Book, Departures and The New York Observer.

Superstition Review did an interview with Crosley in issue 7, you can access that here. To learn more about her and her work, visit her website here.

Contributor Update, Sloane Crosley: 50 notable works of nonfiction in 2018

Look Alive Out ThereToday we are happy to share news of past contributor Sloane Crosley. Sloane’s collection of essays, Look Alive Out There, has been recently named one of “50 notable works of nonfiction in 2018” by The Washington Post. About the collection, Steve Martin says: “Sloane Crosley does the impossible. She stays consistently funny and delivers a book that is alive and jumping.” Look Alive Out There is available for purchase through Amazon here.

Our interview with Sloane can be read in Issue 7 of Superstition Review.

Contributor Update: Sloane Crosley Releases Look Alive Out There

Sloane Crosley's Look Alive Out There CoverToday we are pleased to announce the recent release of Sloane Crosley’sLook Alive Out There. The collection of essays, which was released April 3rd, 2018, is available through multiple outlets including Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Sloane will also be touring for Look Alive Out There; the list of date and locations are available on her website.

Sloane contributed an interview in Superstition Review Issue 7. Former Superstition Review Editor Britney Gulbrandsen and Sloane touch on several of Sloane’s works where epigraphs and inspiration are just a part of the conversation. The interview is a great introduction, and wonderful read, if you are unfamiliar with the author.

Congratulations Sloane!

Launch of Issue 7: Interviews

Superstition Review Issue 7 has launched and to celebrate we will be featuring blog posts about our artists and authors. Today we will be highlighting a few of the interviews featured in Issue 7.

A native of Detroit, John Grogan spent more than 20 years as an investigative reporter and columnist, most recently at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He also is the former editor of Rodale’s Organic Gardening magazine. His first book, Marley & Me, was a #1 New York Times bestseller with six million copies in print in more than 30 languages. It was made into a movie starring Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston. Grogan’s second book, The Longest Trip Home, also a national bestseller, explores the author’s loving but complicated relationship with his devout Irish Catholic parents. John lives with his wife and three children in eastern Pennsylvania. Read the interview featured in issue 7. John Grogan’s Website

Sloane Crosley is the author of The New York Times bestsellers I Was Told There’d Be Cake, which was a finalist for The Thurber Prize, and How Did You Get This Number. She is also a weekly columnist for The Independent in the UK and editor of The Best American Travel Essays 2011. She lives in Manhattan, where she is a regular contributor to GQThe New York Times, National Public Radio and the inexplicably vast and varied collection of granolas in her kitchen cabinet. Read the interview from issue 7. Sloane Crosley’s Website

Jenifer Rae Vernon’s first book of poetry Rock Candy was published by West End Press in 2009. Rock Candy received the “Tillie Olsen Award” as the best book of creative writing that insightfully represents working class life and culture from the Working Class Studies Association, SUNY, Stony Brook, in June of 2010. In August of 2009, Garrison Keillor selected a poem from the collection, “Blackberry Pie” to perform on Writer’s Almanac. And in October of 2010, Keillor selected a second poem from the book, “Ketchican Wrestling” for Writer’s Almanac. Currently, Vernon lives in Juneau, Alaska with her husband and teaches Communication at the University of Alaska Southeast. Read the interview featured in issue 7 here.

Diana Joseph is the author of the short story collection Happy or Otherwise (Carnegie Mellon UP 2003) and I’m Sorry You Feel That Way: The Astonishing But True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother and Friend to Man and Dog (Putnam 2009.) Her work has appeared in Threepenny ReviewWillow Springs, Marie ClaireCountry Living and Best Sex Writing 2009. She teaches in the MFA program at Minnesota State University in Mankato, Minnesota. Read the interview in issue 7. Diana Joseph’s Website

Beverly Lowry was born in Memphis, grew up in Greenville, Mississippi and now lives in Austin where she is working on a book about another case of multiple murder, the unsolved killings of four young girls in an I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt shop, in Austin in 1991. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA fellowship and the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence, she is the author of six novels and three books of nonfiction, she teaches at George Mason University and is currently Writer-in-Residence at Goucher College in Baltimore. Read the interview in issue 7. Beverly Lowry’s Website

 

The full magazine with featured art and artists from issue 7 can be found here. Check back tomorrow to read about the nonfiction authors featured in issue 7.