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Please pay no attention to the fact that the “September” Non-Fiction by Non-Men interview was published in October!

Grace Lavery is a writer, editor, and academic living in Brooklyn, NY. As an Associate Professor of English, Critical Theory, and Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, her research explores the history and theory of aesthetics and interpretation, with particular interests in psychoanalysis, literary realism, and queer and trans cultures. She is the author of Quaint, Exquisite: Victorian Aesthetics and the Idea of Japan, which published by Princeton University Press in 2019, and her speculative memoir, Please Miss: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis, which was published by Seal Press in 2022. Grace has a husband named Daniel and a Japanese Chin named Bon-Bon. She enjoys cooking and walking.

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Bonnie Tsui was born in Queens, New York, and raised on Long Island. She is the author of American Chinatown: A People’s History of Five Neighborhoods, winner of the 2009-2010 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller and Best of 2009 Notable Bay Area Books selection, and Why We Swim, one of TIME magazine’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2020. Her first children’s book, Sarah and the Big Wave, about big-wave women surfers, was just published by Henry Holt Books for Young Readers/Macmillan in May 2021. Tsui lives, swims, and surfs in the Bay Area and is a member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto.

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Leslie Brody is a creative writing professor, playwright, and biographer. She is the author of Irrepressible, her biography of Jessica Mitford, and Sometimes You Have to Lie, her biography of Louise Fitzhugh, author of Harriet the Spy. In addition to her works of biography, Leslie Brody has written a memoir, Red Star Sister, which received the PEN Center USA West Award, and co-authored a book of essays with Gary Amdahl, entitled A Motel of the Mind. She has held International Writing Fellowships at Hawthornden in Scotland and the Camargo Foundation in France. In the U.S. she’s been an artist-in-residence/fellow at the McDowell Colony, Centrum, Yaddo, Red Cinder Colony, Ragdale and the Virginia Center for the Arts. Brody received her MA and Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut. Since 1998, she has taught Creative Nonfiction in the Creative Writing Department at the University of Redlands.

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Lilly Dancyger is the editor of Burn It Down, a critically acclaimed anthology of essays on women’s anger from Seal Press, and the author of Negative Space, a reported and illustrated memoir selected by Carmen Maria Machado as a winner of the 2019 Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards. She is the founder and host of Memoir Monday, a weekly newsletter and quarterly reading series co-curated by Narratively, The Rumpus, Guernica, Granta, Literary Hub, and Catapult, featuring the best memoir writers of today. Her writing has been published by Longreads, The Washington Post, Glamour, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and more. She lives in New York City, and she spends way too much time on Twitter (where you can find her at @lillydancyger).

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Melissa Valentine was born and raised in Oakland, CA. Her nonfiction has appeared in Guernica, Jezebel, and Apogee among others. Valentine is a graduate of the MFA program at Mills College, and she is currently an executive editor at Callisto Media. Her memoir The Names of All the Flowers, published by The Feminist Press, was the 2019 winner of the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize. Valentine lives in Brooklyn, NY.

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I was so sad to hear this morning about the death of Jason Polan. I didn’t know Jason Polan personally, but his art and Instagram presence (@jasonpolan) made my life better. His drawings are deceptively simple but full of humor and love for the quirky weirdness of the world. He’s perhaps best known for his project trying to draw every person in New York which felt like a love letter to the whole city and all of humanity.

My friend Janna Herman and I used to direct message his Instagram posts to each other when we knew the other needed a good laugh––he would write long, rambling, hilarious stories in the captions of his photos about the people and things he saw around New York––and it was always our goal to go to one of his Taco Bell Drawing Club meetings, but the timing never worked. Janna did get to meet him once, when she bought me the little giraffe notebook I have framed in my home, and she said he was so nice and unpretentious and clearly wanted everyone to be able to afford a piece of his art.

I am upset knowing that Jason Polan is gone, but I’ll think of him every time I adjust the temperature in my apartment.

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This past month I’ve been reading a lot about the small businesses closing in and around Harvard Square, such as Black Ink, as outside developers drive up rent to unsustainable rates. Therefore, this month, I’d like to take a moment to remind you all to support small and local businesses as you do your gift shopping this holiday season (F*CK AM*ZON). Some of my favorite places, in addition to Black Ink, for unique and whimsical gifts are Ward Maps, Nomad, Joie de Vivre, Magpie, and Loyal Supply Co. Rebekah Brooks is magnificent for vintage jewelry, and I love Raspberry Beret and The Garment District for vintage clothing. For delicious edible gifts, check out Honeycomb Creamery and Curio Spice Co., for all your toy and game needs go to Henry Bear’s Park, Comicazi, and Pandemonium, and if you want to paint your own gifts, go to Made By Me.

And, obviously, I am obsessed with independent bookstores. This past month I went to so many fantastic author events, all courtesy of your favorite local bookstores. So please, please, PLEASE consider ordering your book presents (because books make the best presents, right?) this holiday season from your local independent bookstores as opposed to the evil empire (F*CK AM*ZON). Some of my favorite bookstores include:

• Newtonville Books in Newton, MA
• Porter Square Books in Cambridge, MA
• Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, MA
• Brookline Booksmith in Brookline, MA
• Papercuts J.P. in Boston, MA
• Book Ends in Winchester, MA
• Trident Booksellers in Boston, MA
• More Than Words in Boston, MA
• Blue Bunny Books in Dedham, MA
• The Silver Unicorn Bookstore in Acton, MA
• Wellesley Books in Wellesley, MA
• The Concord Bookshop in Concord, MA
• Belmont Books in Belmont, MA
• I AM Books in Boston, MA
• McNally Jackson in Manhattan & Brooklyn, NY
• Astoria Bookshop in Queens, NY
• Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn, NY
• The Strand in Manhattan, NY
• Barrett Bookstore in Darien, CT
• Elliott Bay Books in Seattle, WA
• Powell’s in Portland, OR
• Book & Bar in Portsmouth, NH
• Green Hand Bookshop in Portland, ME
• Hello Hello Books in Rockland, ME

Please tell me some of your favorite independent bookstores and/or other favorite small businesses in the comments below. And happy holiday shopping!

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Audrey Murray is a redhead from Boston who moved to China and became a standup comedian. The co-founder of Kung Fu Komedy, Audrey was named the funniest person in Shanghai by City Weekend magazine. Audrey is a staff writer for Reductress.com and a regular contributor at Medium.com; her writing has also appeared in McSweeney’s, LitHub, LARB, The Gothamist, Paste Magazine, Narratively, China Economic Review, Nowness, Architizer, and on the wall of her dad’s office. Audrey has appeared on NPR and The Comedy Center: Live from the Table; the Lost in America, Listen to This!, and Shanghai Comedy Corner podcasts; and on CNN, RTN, and ICS. She recently published her first memoir, Open Mic Night in Moscow. Follow her on Twitter at @ACMwrites.

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For the full interview, see it on Fiction Advocate.
Published on May 14, 2019.

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Mira Jacob is the author and illustrator of Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations. Her critically acclaimed novel The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing was a Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers pick, shortlisted for India’s Tata First Literature Award, and long-listed for the Brooklyn Literary Eagles Prize. It was named one of the best books of 2014 by Kirkus Reviews, the Boston Globe, Goodreads, Bustle, and The Millions. Her writing and drawings have appeared in The New York Times, Electric Literature, Tin House, Literary Hub, Guernica, Vogue, the Telegraph, and Buzzfeed, and she has a drawn column on Shondaland. She currently teaches at The New School, and she is a founding faculty member of the MFA Program at Randolph College. She is the co-founder of Pete’s Reading Series in Brooklyn, where she spent 13 years bringing literary fiction, non-fiction, and poetry to Williamsburg. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, documentary filmmaker Jed Rothstein, and their son.

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Photo credit: Matthew Levine

Dessa is a singer, rapper, writer, and proud member of the Doomtree hip-hop crew. She is the author of My Own Devices: True Stories from the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love, which was published by Dutton Books in September 2018. Dessa’s writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Star Tribune (Minneapolis), Minnesota Monthly, several literary journals, and has been broadcast on Minnesota Public Radio. She has also published two short collections of poetry and essays. Dessa splits her time between Minneapolis, Manhattan, and tour vans across the country.

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