SONYA CHUNG

28 October 2009

I’ve been sitting on, and soaking in, a bit of good news.  Kate Walbert, National Book Award finalist for Our Kind, and author most recently of A Short History of Women, has written a blurb for the dust jacket of Long for This World.

The blurb has on one hand become something of a mundane thing; blurbs go around in literary circles like so many back-scratches.  But the reverence and respect I have for Ms. Walbert’s work as a novelist — smart, original, deeply imagined — and also for the seriousness and focus with which she approaches the writing life, make this bit of fairy dust that she’s generously sprinkled my way (she is a busy teacher and novelist who knows me not at all) feel real.  Like good words for the long journey.

Here’s the blurb:

“An intricately structured and powerfully resonant portrait of lives lived at the crossroads of culture, and a family torn between the old world and the new, Long for This World marks a powerful debut from a young writer of great talent and promise.”

Click here for Kate Walbert on persevering as a writer (short video).

And click here for a terrific roundtable conversation with Charlie Rose, featuring all five of the (female) NBA finalists in 2004, including Walbert.