Hilma Wolitzer is a recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and a Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award. She has taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, New York University, Columbia University, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Her first published story appeared when she was thirty-six, and her first novel eight years later. Her many stories and novels have drawn critical praise for illuminating the dark interiors of the American home. She lives in New York City.
Wit, wisdom and warmth form the foundation of this sparkling collection. Wolitzer is a natural-born storyteller whose rigour, attention and generosity create miracles on each and every page -- Tayari Jones Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket is electric: with wit, with rage, with grief, with the kind of prose that makes you both laugh and thrill to the darker, spikier emotions just barely visible under the bright surface. What a wonderful collection of stories -- Lauren Groff Wolitzer doesn't just brilliantly capture what we imagine is recognisable ordinary life, she reveals the unique magic that is so absolutely transcendent, it makes us see and live in the world differently ... A fabulous collection brimming with the compassion that Wolitzer is known for -- Caroline Leavitt [A] sage collection of stories ... Throughout, Wolitzer captures the feel of each moment with characters who charm with their honesty. The result is a set of engaging time capsules. * Publishers Weekly * Immensely gratifying, poignant, funny ... Breathtaking -- Elizabeth Strout (from the foreword) Hilma Wolitzer sees the miraculous, and the tragic, in modest lives and domestic particulars - wonders that might pass as ordinary events to the untrained eye. She magnifies the world. She insists, in one gorgeous sentence after another, that there's no such thing as a usual hour, let alone a usual day -- Michael Cunningham With her trademark dry wit and abiding compassion, Wolitzer explores the telling details of everyday life in ways that are unsettling, insightful and wholly original. These stories will linger in your mind and get under your skin. They shimmer with life -- Christina Baker Kline [Wolitzer] shows us the ever-shifting alliances of family life and ways in which love can both change and endure. * New York Times * To read Hilma Wolitzer is to laugh in a special way and to allow yourself little intermissions of sheer satisfaction in which you lay the open book facedown on your heart and snuggle with the human race. * Gail Godwin * Wolitzer's vision of the world, for all its sorrow, is often hilarious and always compassionate. * New York Times Book Review * Wolitzer is a champ at the closely observed, droll novel of manners. * NPR * Funny, wise, and touching. * The Washington Post on AN AVAILABLE MAN *