Sarah Micklem
2009 Events

To schedule an appearance or interview, please contact Sarah at micklem[at]firethorn.info.

August 30 2009, from 4pm to 6pm
Join Abigail Thomas, Alison Gaylin, Nina Shengold, Cornelius Eady, and Sarah Micklem for author reading and book signing, with a talk moderated by Chronogram Books Editor Nina Shengold

MUDDY CUP/INQUIRING MIND coffeehouse and bookstore
65 Partition St., Saugerties , NY 12477 (845) 246-5775

Series hosted by Teresa Giordano

Abigail Thomas has written three works of fiction: Getting Over Tom; An Actual Life; and Herb’s Pajamas; and three memoirs: Safekeeping; A Three Dog Life; and Thinking About Memoir, a guide to writing memoir which doubles as a kind of memoir itself. A Three Dog Life was chosen by the Washington Post and the LA Times as one of the best books of 2006 and has been translated into nine languages. Her essays and stories have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, O the Oprah Magazine, Real Simple, Tin House, The Iowa Review, Cosmopolitan Magazine, The Ladies’ Home Journal, The Missouri Review, the Alaska Quarterly and other magazines. She lives in Woodstock , New York , with her three dogs.

Alison Gaylin is the author of the Edgar-nominated thriller Hide Your Eyes, as well as You Kill Me, Trashed and Heartless, which will be released in paperback in September. She is currently at work on And She Was, the first in a new suspense series for HarperCollins, as well as Normandy Gold her first graphic novel, which she is co-writing with Megan Abbott and sold to DC Comics.

Nina Shengold won the Writers Guild Award for Labor of Love, starring Marcia Gay Harden, and the ABC Playwright Award for Homesteaders. Her novel Clearcut (Anchor Books) was a Book Sense Notable selection and Henry Miller Award winner; it was chosen as one of 2005’s best books by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, San Francisco Bay Times, BookMarks and Out. With Eric Lane, she has edited a dozen theatre anthologies for Vintage and Viking Penguin. She is books editor of Chronogram magazine and a founding member of Actors & Writers.

Cornelius Eady is the author of Brutal Imagination, which was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award in Poetry; The Autobiography of a Jukebox; You Don’t Miss Your Water; The Gathering of My Name, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; BOOM BOOM BOOM; Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, which was chosen by Louise Glück, Charles Simic, and Philip Booth for the 1985 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets; and Kartune. With poet Toi Derricote, he co-founded Cave Canam, a summer workshop/retreat for African American poets. Cornelius Eady’s awards include the Prairie Schooner Strousse Award; and fellowships from the NEA, the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations.

Sarah Micklem began writing after many years as an art director for children’s magazines. Her first novel, Firethorn, was a Borders Original Voices pick and a finalist for the 2005 Compton Crook Award. The sequel, Wildfire, was published by Scribner this July. In a starred review, Publisher’s Weekly called it “a rich and memorable tribute to endurance and self-enlightenment.” Micklem is now writing the third book of the Firethorn trilogy; in her other profession, graphic design, she works for Girls Scouts of the USA in New York City. Micklem and her husband, Cornelius Eady, have a summer house in Greene County .

Author readings and book signings take place at the Inquiring Mind in Saugerties on the last Sunday of each month from 4pm to 6pm.

ANTICIPATION WORLDCON, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
August 7-9, 2009

Saturday, 2 PM, Room 522A
Reading with Ellen Kushner and Mindy Klasky

Saturday, 3:30 PM, Room512CG
Panel on Culture and Geography

Sunday, 9 AM, Room 516AB
Panel on The History Builders

Sunday, 10:30 AM, Signing

READERCON, Burlington, MA
July 9-12, 2009

Thursday 9:00 PM, Salon B: Panel
You Don't Know Dictionary! 
Our panelists share their adventures with prodigious vocabularies and blank pages.

Friday 11:30 AM, Salon A
Reading from her just-published novel Wildfire (30 min.)

Friday 6:00 PM, ME/ CT: Talk / Discussion (60 min.)
A Different Mind
In Micklem's new book, Wildfire, the narrator is struck by lightning and
suffers brain damage that results in aphasia, memory loss, and insomnia.
Because the novel is a fantasy, the interpretation of her afflictions-
within the world of the book-is completely non-scientific. Firethorn feels
cursed by the god of lightning, but other characters believe she has been
blessed, and they search her garbled utterances for prophecies. Micklem
will talk about what inspired her to mix neuroscience with a magical
worldview: neurologists' case studies, the ordeals of shamans, and
firsthand accounts by survivors of lightning strikes and strokes. What
different selves are revealed when brains are drastically reorganized?
What strange abilities?

Sunday 11:00 AM, Salon E: Panel
Divinatory Systems In Imaginative Literature
What are the motivations of authors who use divinatory systems in their fiction? 
What do such works end up saying about causality?

WILDFIRE release date!
July 7, 2009

WISCON, Madison, WI
May 22-25, 2009

May 23, 10-11:15 am: "Sex, Drugs, Magic, and Rock and Roll," reading with Ben Burgis and Fred Schepartz

May 23, 2:30-3:45 pm: Panel on "Food in a Post-Oil Economy"

May 23, 10:30-11:45 pm: Panel on "Witches and Wizards: Gender and Power in Portrayals of Magic"

For more on WISCON, go to www.wiscon.info