Denise Derya Brandt

Denise Derya Brandt worked in international development for more than twenty years and led women’s health projects in Afghanistan, Liberia, and Myanmar before becoming a published author. A Book Incubator graduate, 2024 Women's Fiction Writers Association Rising Star Award finalist, and 2025 Poets & Writers Publicity Incubator Fellow, Brandt has degrees from Arizona State and the London School of Economics. As a Turkish American, she claims she can fool tourists but not taxi drivers! Raised in Arizona, Brandt now lives in northern Kentucky with her husband. Istanbul Dreaming is her debut novel.

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

I tend to read books in bursts. I may go weeks without reading a book and then I’ll read three in one week. (I tend to write this way, too). Often, I listen to audiobooks from the library, but if there is a book I’m specifically trying to learn from, either because I admire the author’s writing or because of its subject matter, I will buy and read the paperback. I currently have a huge stack of books I need to read, many authored by people I know, but I’ve been prioritizing reading library books before I have to return them. What’s that saying? “Something that can be done at any time is often done at no time.”

These are a few books I enjoyed most recently.

The Pearl That Broke Its Shell by Nadia Hashimi – I recently re-read this to prepare for her newest novel, The City of Widows, which is a stand-alone novel centered on the same protagonist. The novel follows Rahima, a girl in modern Afghanistan who is dressed as a boy so she can work and move freely, her story braided with that of her great-great- grandmother Shekiba a century earlier, who survives her own version of the same constraints. Nadia brings Afghan women’s stories to life. And this important story breaks your heart and frustrates you, but you cannot and should not look away. I keep coming back to Nadia’s writing because I want to learn from and emulate how she infuses culture and heart into a story.

I also love juicy memoirs and these two did not disappoint:

Famesick: A Memoir by Lena Dunham – I wasn’t necessarily a Lena Dunham fan going in, but I heard this was a great book, so I borrowed the audiobook, which she narrates herself, from my library. It’s the first book of hers I’ve read and I was genuinely impressed. She writes about the less-than- glamorous side of fame and celebrity, tangled up with her addiction, autoimmune, and reproductive health issues she’s dealt with for years. Her metaphors are masterful, landing on the perfect image for the reader. Whether you’re a fan or not, Famesick is a great read, and it left me with a lot more empathy for her, both as a public figure and as a woman managing a body that kept betraying her.

Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage by Belle Burden – Like a celebrity memoir, this one dropped me into a world I knew little about: old-money New York, inherited trust funds, a marriage that looked picture-perfect from the outside. Burden built a life around her husband’s career and then, early in the pandemic, learned from a stranger’s message that he’d been having an affair and that he wanted out of the marriage and family entirely. It reads like a novel, with enough twists that I kept trying to guess what came next. If even half of what Burden describes is accurate, she’s shown remarkable resilience through a genuinely bewildering betrayal. It’s a New York Times bestseller for a reason.

Visit Denise Derya Brandt's website.

--Marshal Zeringue