Gae Polisner

Gae Polisner is the award-winning author of The Pull of Gravity. She is a family law mediator by trade but a writer by calling. She lives on Long Island with her husband and two sons. When she’s not writing, she can be found in a pool or, in warmer weather, in her wet suit in the open waters of Long Island Sound. Her new book, The Summer of Letting Go, is her second novel for teen readers.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Polisner's reply:

I am literally today just about to finish Matthew Quick’s terrific Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock. I’m embarrassed to admit it’s my first Matthew Quick book (since I hear they are all pretty stellar), which is reason number one why I’m reading it. Besides that, the theme of a teen boy with plans, on the day of his 18th birthday, to kill his former best friend them himself, resonated with me against the backdrop of the spate of recent school shootings. What would bring a kid to feel so hopeless and distraught? What might bring him back from the brink? Hope? Questions we all need to find answers to.

Funnily enough, I am simultaneously reading another “school shooting” book, this one adult fiction more than a decade old: We Need to Talk About Kevin, by Lionel Shriver, a book with such skilled and impeccable writing it pretty much boggles my own writer mind. I’ve actually been reading it page by page for over a year in between reading newer fiction and books I feel I should read because of my YA writing career. Pretty much every paragraph amazes me.

As for Leonard Peacock, the best thing about it at the moment, besides it just being a compelling read, is that it has switched on the light bulb for me about the gist of what is wrong (not yet right?) with my current manuscript. Or, wait, maybe that’s the worst thing.

Visit Gae Polisner's website.

--Marshal Zeringue