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A book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle and People, she’s the recipient of a New York Foundation of the Arts Grant in Fiction, and was a finalist in both the Sundance Screenwriters’ Lab and the Nickelodeon Screenwriters’ Fellowships.
Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Leavitt's reply:
Right now, I am actually rereading. Three writer friends of mine recently sent me their finished manuscripts, which were all so great, I decided to go back and reread their last novels,Visit Caroline Leavitt's website and blog.just for the pure pleasure of seeing the progression from one novel to the next. I reread Up From The Blue by Susan Henderson, which is so exquisitely written, so heartbreakingly sad (always a plus in my book) about a young girl’s struggle through her troubled childhood. Next I reread The Jazz Palace, about Chicago, and jazz and finding your true passion, by Mary Morris because the manuscript she showed me was so incredibly original, so haunting—and I began to think that having taken such risks in The Jazz Palace had helped her to do this. And finally, I am rereading Edges, the novel by Leora Skolkin-Smith, about a mother and a daughter, about Israel and Palestine, because her new novel, about Grace Paley, is so flat-out-astonishing.
My Book, The Movie: Cruel Beautiful World.
The Page 69 Test: Cruel Beautiful World.
--Marshal Zeringue