Cris Mazza

Last updated

Cris Mazza (born 1956) is an American novelist, short story writer, and non-fiction author.

Contents

Early life and education

A native of Southern California, Mazza earned her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees from San Diego State University and her Master of Fine Arts in writing at Brooklyn College.

Career

Mazza has published 10 novels, six collections, and two memoirs. [1] She is widely anthologized as an example of post-feminist, formalist, or contemporary experimental fiction. Her work often deals with second and third-wave feminist concerns as well as sexuality.

Along with Jeffrey DeShell, Mazza used the term "chick lit" for the edited anthology Chick Lit Postfeminist Fiction (1995) and the follow-up anthology Chick Lit 2: No Chick Vics (1996). [2] While originally meant to be ironic, the term was co-opted to define a very different sort of work. In 2007, Gretchen Kalwinsky of Time Out Chicago called Mazza "an award-winning author who has waged a one-woman war against the chick-lit genre". [3]

During an interview with Rain Taxi , Mazza termed her 2013 memoir, Something Wrong With Her a ‘meta-memoir.’ The memoir explores sexual dysfunction. [4]

Mazza directs the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago. [5] She won the PEN / Nelson Algren Award for her novel How to Leave a Country. [6]

In addition, Mazza received an &NOW award in 2009 for her story "Trickle-Down Timeline," published in The &NOW Awards: The Best Innovative Writing in 2009. She has also participated in the biennial &NOW festival.

In 2016, Mazza co-produced and starred in the independent film, Anorgasmia. Based on her memoir, Something Wrong With Her, the film continues the struggles of sexual frustration felt by Mazza. Despite acting as a fictional sequel to the memoir, the film continues with the memoir's themes, exploring the conflicts and anxieties of sexual frustration. [7]

In 2020, Mazza was asked to be the finalist judge for the Leapfrog Press Global Fiction Prize Contest. She selected Molly Giles's short story collection Wife withKnife as the winner.

Works

Published Writing:

Film:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joanna Russ</span> American writer

Joanna Russ was an American writer, academic and feminist. She is the author of a number of works of science fiction, fantasy and feminist literary criticism such as How to Suppress Women's Writing, as well as a contemporary novel, On Strike Against God, and one children's book, Kittatinny. She is best known for The Female Man, a novel combining utopian fiction and satire, and the story "When It Changed".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Susie Bright</span> American writer and feminist

Susannah Bright is an American feminist, author and journalist, often on the subject of politics and sexuality.

Chick lit is a term used to describe a type of popular fiction targeted at young women. Widely used in the 1990s and 2000s, the term has fallen out of fashion with publishers, while writers and critics have rejected its inherent sexism. Novels identified as chick lit typically address romantic relationships, female friendships, and workplace struggles in humorous and lighthearted ways. Typical protagonists are urban, heterosexual women in their late twenties and early thirties: the 1990s chick lit heroine represented an evolution of the traditional romantic heroine in her assertiveness, financial independence and enthusiasm for conspicuous consumption.

<i>The Devil Wears Prada</i> (novel) 2003 novel on which 2006 film is based

The Devil Wears Prada is a 2003 novel by Lauren Weisberger about a young woman who is hired as a personal assistant to a powerful fashion magazine editor, a job that becomes nightmarish as she struggles to keep up with her boss's grueling schedule and demeaning demands. It spent six months on the New York Times bestseller list and became the basis for the 2006 film of the same name, starring Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, and Emily Blunt. The novel is considered by many to be an example of the "chick lit" genre.

Ronald Sukenick was an American writer and literary theorist.

Jane Green also known by her married name, Jane Green Warburg, is an English-born American author whose works of fiction are American and international best-sellers. As of 2014, Green's books had sold in excess of 10 million copies globally, with translations of them appearing in thirty-one languages, making her a leading author, globally, of commercial women's fiction. With regard to genres, she has been described as "[o]ne of the first of the chick lit" authors, and as a founding author of the form of fiction sometimes referred to as "mum lit."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fiction Collective Two</span>

Fiction Collective Two (FC2) is an author-run, not-for-profit publisher of avant-garde, experimental fiction supported in part by the University of Utah, the University of Alabama Press, Central Michigan University, Illinois State University, private contributors, arts organizations and foundations, and contest fees.

Jennifer Weiner is an American writer, television producer, and journalist. She is based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her debut novel, published in 2001, was Good in Bed. Her novel In Her Shoes (2002) was made into a movie starring Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette, and Shirley MacLaine.

Michelle Citron is a film, video and multimedia artist, scholar and author.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christopher Sorrentino</span> American writer (born 1963)

Christopher Sorrentino is an American novelist and short story writer of Italian and Puerto Rican descent. He is the son of novelist Gilbert Sorrentino and Victoria Ortiz. His first published novel, Sound on Sound (1995), draws upon innovations pioneered in the work of his father, but also contains echoes of many other modernist and postmodernist writers. The book is structured according to the format of a multitrack recording session, with corresponding section titles.

<i>O Street</i> 2007 short story collection written by Corrina Wycoff

O Street is a 2007 short story collection written by Corrina Wycoff. Called a "novel-in-stories" by OV Books, it explores the troubled life of young professional Beth Dinard from the perspective of the character herself as well as others around her. O Street was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Debut Fiction in 2007.

Corrina Wycoff is an American writer known for her 2007 short story collection O Street and 2016 novel Damascus House. O Street was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Debut Fiction in 2007.

Renate Stendhal is an interpersonal counselor, writing coach, and author of nonfiction, fiction, and self-help books exploring feminist, erotic, and lesbian themes, including three co-written with therapist and author Kim Chernin, her life partner. Many of her books focus on the erotic and creative empowerment of women. Born in Germany, she has lived in northern California since the 1980s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chick flick</span> Slang term for romantic film genre catering to young women

Chick flick is a slang term, sometimes used pejoratively, for the film genre catered specifically to women's interests, and is marketed toward women demographics. They generally tend to appeal more to a younger female audience and deal mainly with love and romance. Although many types of films may be directed toward a female audience, the term "chick flick" is typically used only in reference to films that contain personal drama and emotion or themes that are relationship-based. Chick flicks often are released en masse around Valentine's Day. Feminists such as Gloria Steinem have objected to terms such as "chick flick" and the related genre term "chick lit", and a film critic has called it derogatory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Natalya Fink</span> American novelist

Jennifer Natalya Fink is an American author working in experimental feminist and queer fiction. She is best known for her novels Burn, V, and The Mikvah Queen, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 2010. Her novel, Bhopal Dance (2018), won the FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize in 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jesse Lee Kercheval</span> American poet (born 1956)

Jesse Lee Kercheval is an American poet, memoirist, translator and fiction writer. She is an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is the author of numerous books, notably Building Fiction, The Museum of Happiness, Space and Underground Women.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aminatta Forna</span> Scottish and Sierra Leonean writer

Aminatta Forna, OBE, is a Scottish and Sierra Leonean writer. She is the author of a memoir, The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest, and four novels: Ancestor Stones (2006), The Memory of Love (2010), The Hired Man (2013) and Happiness (2018). Her novel The Memory of Love was awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for "Best Book" in 2011, and was also shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Forna is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and was, until recently, Sterling Brown Distinguished Visiting professor at Williams College in Massachusetts. She is currently Director and Lannan Foundation Chair of Poetics of the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice at Georgetown University.

Feminism has affected culture in many ways, and has famously been theorized in relation to culture by Angela McRobbie, Laura Mulvey and others. Timothy Laurie and Jessica Kean have argued that "one of [feminism's] most important innovations has been to seriously examine the ways women receive popular culture, given that so much pop culture is made by and for men." This is reflected in a variety of forms, including literature, music, film and other screen cultures.

Aimee Parkison is an American writer known for experimental, lyrical, feminist fiction. She has won the FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize as well as the first annual Starcherone Fiction Prize and has taught creative writing at a number of universities, including Cornell University, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and Oklahoma State University.

Alexandra Chasin is an American experimental writer based in Brooklyn, New York. She is also an associate professor of literary studies at The Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts.

References

  1. http://cris-mazza.com/
  2. "What is chick-lit? - Electronic Book Review". www.electronicbookreview.com. Archived from the original on 2018-04-15. Retrieved 2008-01-06.
  3. Kalwinsky, Gretchen (March 15–21, 2007). "Chicks and Balances" (PDF). Time Out Chicago . Archived from the original (PDF) on April 23, 2016. Retrieved April 6, 2016.
  4. Farkas, Andrew. http://www.raintaxi.com/an-invisible-interview-with-cris-mazza/ "An Invisible Interview with Cris Mazza." Rain Taxi. Spring 2014.
  5. "UIC Department of English Homepage". www.uic.edu.
  6. "Soft Skull: Waterbaby by Cris Mazza". Archived from the original on November 9, 2007. Retrieved August 14, 2017.
  7. "Film & Music | Cris Mazza".