Thursday, May 20, 2010

Ilie Ruby

Ilie Ruby is the author of The Language of Trees.

Ruby won the Phi Kappa Phi Award for Fiction, the Eden L. Moses Award, a Kerr Foundation Fiction Scholarship, the Wesleyan Writer’s Conference Scholarship in NonFiction, and the Barbara Kemp Award for Outstanding Teaching and Scholarship. She has published poems and short stories in literary and online magazines, and is the former fiction editor of The Southern California Anthology. A graduate of the Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California, she has worked on PBS documentaries in Honduras, as well as taught elementary school in Los Angeles.

Earlier this month I asked her what she was reading. Her reply:
I’ve turned to an old classic, To Kill A Mockingbird, because it is the 50th anniversary of the publication of this extraordinary and compelling novel that long ago filled me with a love of reading and such a powerful sense of story and character; because the characters of Scout, Jem and Atticus have remained so vivid in my mind after all this time and have left such lasting impressions in such memorable ways; because issues of race in society are so very central to my life now; and because I like to believe—or rather assert—that despite our weaknesses and flaws, we are inherently moral and good, and the opportunity to be heroic is never far out of reach. This book is an affirmation of that belief.
Visit Ilie Ruby's website and blog, and Facebook page.

--Marshal Zeringue