!How to Get Into the Twin Palms, by Karolina Waclawiak, is all over Salon’s ‘What To Read Awards.’ The debut novel made it onto four different critics’ top 10 of 2012 lists, and was Salon’s “Most Overlooked Book of the Year,” where Roxane Gay called it “beautifully written and so suffused with loneliness it makes you ache.”!
(Source: salon.com)
Emily Pullen and Karolina Waclawiak at last night’s National Book Awards after-party.
Abigail Deutsch reviews Karolina Waclawiak’s HOW TO GET INTO THE TWIN PALMS in this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, calling the book “illuminating” and “its own manner of spy novel.”
“Waclawiak’s novel (her first) reinvents the immigration story. How to Get Into the Twin Palms movingly portrays a protagonist intent on both creating and destroying herself, on burning brightly even as she goes up in smoke.”
Read the complete review here.
I kind of feel like Los Angeles is the last place where one can be charmed into thinking the American dream is still real. People move there every day to “make it” and reinvent themselves. I thought it was an interesting place to set a novel about trying to become someone else in a way that was not linked with Hollywood. The book deals with a Los Angeles that is completely detached from glamour. There is a moment when Anya is walking up Sunset Boulevard and staring at the Chateau Marmont and the billboards that line the street. She may as well be on Mars because it is so foreign to her, and yet she only lives a few blocks away. That is L.A. to me — pockets of wealth bracing themselves inelegantly against immigrant neighborhoods or less-prosperous areas. It’s also the perfect setting for a book about displacement and detachment because the city is almost like a vast orphanage. It seems as though everyone is searching for something, who to be most especially.
-Karolina Waclawiak, interviewed by David Ulin for the Los Angeles Times.
(Source: Los Angeles Times)
I loved the food and the culture. And the language! I’m such a language whore. I was repeating the words in what I’m SURE was mangled pronunciation and grinning to myself. The sensory input in the novel was fantastic. She really excelled there. You smelled things, you felt things, you saw things.
Great discussion of Karolina Waclawiak’s HOW TO GET INTO THE TWIN PALMS over at Insatiable Booksluts that will probably definitely make you want to read the book.
(Source: insatiablebooksluts.com)
The New York Times ArtsBeat blog interviewed Karolina Waclawiak about “her resemblance to Anya [the protagonist of her novel], her favorite writers on L.A., how she would cast a movie version of her novel and more.”
Tonight, Waclawiak celebrates the release of her debut novel, HOW TO GET INTO THE TWIN PALMS, at Word Bookstore. The event is being sponsored by the amazing folks at The Believer (where the author also serves as Deputy Editor), and will feature Waclawiak in conversation with interviews editor Ross Simonini.
Here are some of the other latest happenings for Waclawiak and HOW TO GET INTO THE TWIN PALMS from the past couple days:
This is where I spend most of my time at home in Brooklyn. My desk is right next to our patio where we’ve created a bird haven. I have a little bird bath and feeder along with dozens of potted plants so the birds can feel at home. They line the railing while I’m working and chirp to the music…
The precise and evocative language of both novels is what lets us enter into these women’s minds, their neuroses, and their history. The details of the world in which Iris finds such solace and her story-like dreams are the most telling things about her. For Anya, it is her bodily reaction to the smells around her that holds the answer to what she truly wants and needs; how she feels about the smell of yeast, a man’s sweat on her sheets, homemade chicken soup.
These women, like many of us right now, are at a moment in their lives when their sense of reality is lost, and though they deal with this in vastly different ways, Iris and Anya look for renewal in the wind, in fire, in escape, in fleeting illusions. Where they look, ultimately, isn’t what matters, and is not the source of urgency that keeps us reading. What matters is the relentlessness with which they search for renewal at all. And their search, for now, will be my new definition of feminism.
"— From a fantastic essay by Sara Finnerty on Karolina Waclawiak’s How To Get Into the Twin Palms and Anne-Marie Kinney’s Radio Iris, over at HTML Giant.
(Source: htmlgiant.com)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 2, 2012
MIDDLETOWN, NJ — Word Riot Inc. announced Karolina Waclawiak and James Arthur as the first recipients of the nonprofit’s travel grant awards for writers and poets.
The organization, established in July 2011, is dedicated to promoting independent literature and supporting emerging authors. As part of that effort, Word Riot Inc. awards quarterly travel grants of $100 to $500 to small press writers and poets. The company’s travel grants help offset the costs a writer incurs participating in readings and literary events around the country.
Karolina Waclawiak
“The Word Riot grant will give me the opportunity to travel West and reach new, curious readers,” Waclawiak said.
Small presses are often unable to fully fund book tours, promotional events or trips to writers’ conferences, leading authors to pay for travel out of pocket or skip such opportunities. Supplemental funding–such as that offered by Word Riot Inc.’s travel grants–can make the world of difference in a project’s success.
Two Dollar Radio Publisher Eric Obenauf called Waclawiak a “super-hero new talent” and noted the travel grant will help expose her witty, insightful novel to more readers.
“This terrific new grant affords Karolina the chance to connect personally with readers she may otherwise have been forced to miss, which is an invaluable opportunity for a first-time novelist,” Obenauf said. “Word Riot is making a substantial contribution to the work of indie press authors.”
James Arthur
James Arthur is the second recipient of a Word Riot Inc. travel grant. Arthur’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Poetry, Ploughshares, and The American Poetry Review. He has received the Amy Lowell Travelling Poetry Scholarship, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a Discovery/The Nation Prize, and a residency at the Amy Clampitt House. During 2012-2013, he will be a Hodder Fellow at the Lewis Center for the Arts in Princeton. Copper Canyon Press will release his first book, Charms against Lightning, this fall.
“I’m so grateful for Word Riot’s support,” Arthur said. “My first book of poems, Charms against Lightning, will be published this October, and the travel grant from Word Riot will make it possible for me to fly from my home on the East Coast to Albuquerque, where I’ll give some readings to promote my book.”
Word Riot Inc. is currently accepting applications for its third quarter travel grant award. The organization is also sponsoring the Paula Anderson Book Award for a novel or short story collection published in 2011. The title should have increased awareness of or otherwise drawn attention to the small press community because of the merit of the work. The winning author will receive $1,000.
Word Riot Inc. is in the process of seeking tax-exempt status as a 501(c)3 charitable organization. The young organization depends on the financial support and generosity of those who champion the literary arts. To help contribute to Word Riot Inc. or to learn more, visit its website at http://wordriot.us.
Media Contact:
Jackie Corley
President, Word Riot Inc.
PO Box 414
Middletown, NJ 07748
word.riot.inc@gmail.com
(732) 858-1173
Latest addition to our Small Press Favorites section: Two Dollar Radio!
“I felt her loneliness and wanted it. I wanted hers. I didn’t want mine anymore.”
—Karolina Waclawiak, How To Get Into the Twin Palms
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