Fiona Maazel

Fiona Maazel is the author of the novels Last Last Chance and Woke Up Lonely. She is winner of the Bard Prize for Fiction and a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35″ honoree, which feels less potent now that she is 38. Her work has appeared in Anthem, Bomb, Book Forum, Boston Book Review, The Common, Conjunctions, Fence, GQ, Glamour, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The Millions, Mississippi Review, N+1, The National Post, The New York Times, The NY Times Sunday Book Review, Salon, This American Life, Tin House, The Village Voice, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. She teaches at Brooklyn College, New York University, Columbia, and Princeton, and was appointed the Picador Guest Professor at the University of Leipzig, Germany, for the spring of 2012. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Recently I asked Maazel about what she was reading.  Her reply:

Right now I'm reading about 9,000 student stories and The Art of Subtext by Charles Baxter, which is the second of his essay collections on fiction, the first being Burning Down the House, which I consider a bible of sorts. A must-read for any writer--seasoned or new to the game. His observations about fiction and craft are so astute, it's often hard to know what is more pleasurable: reading the original fiction or his take on it. In one of my favorite essays from Burning Down the House, "On Defamiliarization," he offers up a reading of Sherwood Anderson's story "Adventure" that is so smart and engaging, I get a little tingly whenever I read it. Yep, I said tingly. The Art of Subtext is, so far, no less engaging. It's probably more disciplined than his earlier essays, but still sprightly and smart. I learn so much from reading Baxter's critical work, I just want him to write more. More, please. More soon.

Visit Fiona Maazel's website.

The Page 69 Test: Last Last Chance.

My Book, The Movie: Last Last Chance.

--Marshal Zeringue