Alix Strauss

Last updated

Alix Strauss is an American author and satirist based in Manhattan. Her four published books include her two non-fiction works Have I Got A Guy For You and Death Becomes Them: Unearthing the Suicides of the Brilliant, the Famous, and the Notorious, and her two works of fiction The Joy of Funerals and Based Upon Availability.

Contents

Biography

Strauss currently lives and works in Manhattan and is a freelance journalist. She graduated from New York University [ when? ] with a degree in educational theater and for the past 15 years has taught creative writing, fiction writing, writing for magazines, and personal essay writing. [1]

Writing career

Strauss' published works include interviews with Viggo Mortensen, Kristin Chenoweth, Carrie Fisher, and many others. She is known[ by whom? ] for her unusual and edgy articles including, for example, one she wrote after having a consultation with sexologist Betty Dodson, Ph.D. for some masturbation tips. [2]

The Joy of Funerals was published in 2003 by St. Martin's Griffin. It has been described[ by whom? ] as "a novel in stories" tied together by the narrative that follows the life of Nina, a single woman in her thirties who attends the funerals of the previous tales' deceased characters, hoping to find some human connection. The various stories feature a variety for characters including a widow in "Recovering Larry" who looks for male companionship at the funerals she attends to the woman in "Swimming Without Annette" who has a troublesome obsession with her lover's killer.

Have I Got A Guy For You: What Really Happens When Mom Fixes You Up (Polka Dot Press, 2008) is an anthology of 26 true stories, edited by Strauss, about mothers who have fixed up their daughters on horrifically bad blind dates. These true stories are personal narratives from today's top[ according to whom? ] contemporary female writers. Examples of these failed dates include a mother who wrote to Michael Gelman, the producer of Live with Regis and Kelly hoping to fix him up with her daughter, a woman whose blind date serenaded her, dressed head to toe in leather in the middle of a Starbucks, a writer who spent her blind date - all eight hours of it - at a Dungeons & Dragons convention complete with costumes, and many others.

In 2009 HarperCollins Publishers printed Strauss's third book Death Becomes Them: Unearthing the Suicides of the Brilliant, the Famous, and the Notorious, a non-fiction work about famous suicides.

Strauss' most-recently published novel Based Upon Availability (HarperCollins Publishers) came out in June 2010. In similar fashion to The Joy of Funerals, the book follows the lives of several women tied together by one central narrator, Morgan, a hotel manager - an emotionally battered character, haunted by her dead sister's memory, desperately seeking human connection. The book's jacket cover describes the hotel as "offering sanctuary to some, solace to others, the hotel captures their darkest moments as they grapple with family, sex, power, love, and death." [3]

Strauss's essays have been anthologized in Sex, Drugs & Gefilte Fish ... The Heeb Storytelling Collection and her short fiction has been featured in the Primavera , Hampton Shorts, The Idaho Review , Quality Women's Fiction, Stories from the Blue Moon Cafe III, and A Kudzu Christmas.

The Joy of Funerals has been optioned for film. Strauss will write the screenplay and Stockard Channing is expected to direct the film adaptation. [4] Death Becomes Them has been optioned for a television show by a well-known producer. [5]

Awards and honors

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Agatha Christie</span> English mystery and detective writer (1890–1976)

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End since 1952. A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime". She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amy Tan</span> American novelist (born 1952)

Amy Ruth Tan is an American author of Chinese heritage, best known for the novel The Joy Luck Club (1989), which was adapted into a 1993 film. She is also known for other novels, short story collections, children's books, and a memoir.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wilkie Collins</span> English novelist and playwright (1824–1889)

William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist and playwright known especially for The Woman in White (1859), a mystery novel and early "sensation novel", and for The Moonstone (1868), which established many of the ground rules of the modern detective novel and is also perhaps the earliest clear example of the police procedural genre.

<i>The Murder of Roger Ackroyd</i> 1926 detective novel by Agatha Christie

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a detective novel by the British writer Agatha Christie, her third to feature Hercule Poirot as the lead detective. The novel was published in the UK in June 1926 by William Collins, Sons, having previously been serialised as Who Killed Ackroyd? between July and September 1925 in the London Evening News. An American edition by Dodd, Mead and Company followed in 1926.

<i>The Blind Assassin</i> 2000 novel by Margaret Atwood

The Blind Assassin is a novel by the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood. It was first published by McClelland and Stewart in 2000. The book is set in the fictional Ontario town of Port Ticonderoga and in Toronto. It is narrated from the present day, referring to previous events that span the twentieth century but mostly the 1930s and 1940s. It is a work of historical fiction with the major events of Canadian history forming an important backdrop, for example, the On-to-Ottawa Trek and a 1934 Communist rally at Maple Leaf Gardens. Greater verisimilitude is given by a series of newspaper articles commenting on events and on the novel's characters from a distance.

Desmond Bagley was an English journalist and novelist known mainly for a series of bestselling thrillers. He and fellow British writers such as Hammond Innes and Alistair MacLean set conventions for the genre: a tough, resourceful, but essentially ordinary hero pitted against villains determined to sow destruction and chaos for their own ends.

Victoria Strauss is the author of nine fantasy novels for adults and young adults, including the Stone series and the Way of Arata series. She has written hundreds of book reviews for magazines and ezines, including SF Site and Fantasy magazine, and her articles on writing have appeared in Writer's Digest and elsewhere. In 2006, she served as a judge for the World Fantasy Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Lindsay Gresham</span> American writer

William Lindsay Gresham was an American novelist and non-fiction author particularly well-regarded among readers of noir. His best-known work is Nightmare Alley (1946), which was adapted to film in 1947 and 2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ferenc Molnár</span> Hungarian-born dramatist and novelist

Ferenc Molnár, often anglicized as Franz Molnar, was a Hungarian-born author, stage director, dramatist, and poet, widely regarded as Hungary's most celebrated and controversial playwright. His primary aim through his writing was to entertain by transforming his personal experiences into literary works of art. He never connected to any one literary movement. However, he did utilize the precepts of naturalism, Neo-Romanticism, Expressionism, and Freudian psychoanalytic theories, but only as long as they suited his desires. "By fusing the realistic narrative and stage tradition of Hungary with Western influences into a cosmopolitan amalgam, Molnár emerged as a versatile artist whose style was uniquely his own."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frigyes Karinthy</span> Hungarian writer (1887–1938)

Frigyes Karinthy was a Hungarian author, playwright, poet, journalist, and translator. He was the first proponent of the six degrees of separation concept, in his 1929 short story, Chains (Láncszemek). Karinthy remains one of the most popular Hungarian writers. He was the brother of artist Ada Karinthy and the father of poet Gábor Karinthy and writer Ferenc Karinthy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wally Lamb</span> American novelist (born 1950)

Wally Lamb is an American author known as the writer of the novels She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, both of which were selected for Oprah's Book Club. He was the director of the Writing Center at Norwich Free Academy in Norwich from 1989 to 1998 and has taught Creative Writing in the English Department at the University of Connecticut.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kathryn Casey</span> American novelist

Kathryn Casey is an American writer of mystery novels and non-fiction books. She is best known for writing She Wanted It All, which recounts the case of Celeste Beard, who married an Austin multimillionaire only to convince her lesbian lover, Tracey Tarlton, to kill him.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Virginia Terhune</span> American author

Mary Virginia Terhune, also known by her penname Marion Harland, was an American author who was prolific and bestselling in both fiction and non-fiction genres. Born in Amelia County, Virginia, she began her career writing articles at the age of 14, using various pennames until 1853, when she settled on Marion Harland. Her first novel Alone was published in 1854 and became an "emphatic success" following its second printing the next year. For fifteen years she was a prolific writer of best-selling women's novels, classified then as "plantation fiction", as well as writing numerous serial works, short stories, and essays for magazines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David M. Kiely</span>

David M. Kiely is a writer of fiction and non-fiction. Having worked in advertising in several countries, he returned to Ireland in 1991, to take up writing full-time. His first book was published in 1994. He currently lives in Newry, County Down, Northern Ireland, with his wife and co-author Christina McKenna.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mikita Brottman</span>

Mikita Brottman, née Mikita Hoy, is a British American non-fiction author, scholar, and psychologist known for her interest in true crime. Her writing blends a number of genres, often incorporating elements of autobiography, psychoanalysis, forensic psychology, and literary history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sunny Singh (writer)</span> Indian-born academic and writer (born 1969)

Sunny Singh FRSL is an Indian-born academic and writer of fiction and creative non-fiction. She is Professor of Creative Writing and Inclusion in the Arts at London Metropolitan University.

<i>Slights</i> (novel) 2009 novel by Kaaron Warren

Slights is a 2009 horror novel by Australian writer Kaaron Warren. It is her debut novel and is about a woman who withdraws from society and has near-death experiences in which she enters a dark room where she is tormented by people she had previously slighted. It was first published as a paperback original and e-book in the United Kingdom and Australia in July 2009 by Angry Robot, an offshoot of HarperCollins, and in the United States by Angry Robot in September 2010.

Janhavi Acharekar is an Indian writer of fiction and travel. She is the author of the novel Wanderers, All (2015), a collection of short stories Window Seat: Rush-hour stories from the city (2009), both published by HarperCollins and a travel guide Moon Mumbai and Goa (2009), by Moon Handbooks.

Jane Harper is a British–Australian author known for her crime novels The Dry, Force of Nature and The Lost Man, all set in rural Australia.

<i>Magpie Murders</i> Novel by Anthony Horowitz

Magpie Murders is a 2016 mystery novel by British author Anthony Horowitz and the first novel in the Susan Ryeland series. The story focuses on the murder of a mystery author and uses a story within a story format.

References

  1. "Alix Strauss: Author and Trend Journalist". Archived from the original on March 20, 2011. Retrieved March 15, 2011.
  2. "Alix Strauss: Author and Trend Journalist". Archived from the original on March 9, 2011. Retrieved March 15, 2011.
  3. Strauss, Alix. Jacket cover of Based Upon Availability. HarperCollins Publishers. New York, NY. 2010.
  4. "The Joy of Funerals for Channing". Monsters and Critics. August 9, 2005.
  5. Alix Strauss's official website "Alix Strauss: Author and Trend Journalist". Archived March 20, 2011, at the Wayback Machine