Right between the bookshelves, Jessica Anya Blau haunted the bookshelves of Barnes and Noble for the reading of her second novel, Drinking Closer to Home.
A sun-kissed California girl, she now teaches at Goucher College though she used to teach at Hopkins, and is a graduate of the Writing Seminars department here.
A Berkeley graduate with a degree in French, Blau started writing when she lived in Toronto, Canada, as the provisions of her visa did not allow her to work or go to school.
It’s clear she loves Baltimore, mentioning that “it’s intimate, village-y and sweet. And the writers in the area are all supportive of each other.” She compared teaching at Goucher to teaching in California, as the kids are very mellow, though she has great love for Hopkins because of the “talented, wonderful and diverse student body.”
There were many people in attendance for her reading: obsessed students, local bookworms, photographer Bill Hughes, the editor of 32 Poems Magazine Deborah Ager and “the postcard guy” Michael Kimball.
Drinking Closer to Home emerged from a short story she wrote called “Home for the Heart Attack,” which was based on actual events.
The novel, however, takes place over several decades in California, through the eyes of three kids who come home after their mother has a heart attack. Throughout the novel there are flashback chapters so, as Blau explained, “reading one out loud won’t give anything away.”
The lives of the fictional characters run parallel to Blau and her siblings’ lives. Portia, Anna and Emery are based on the author herself, her older sister and her younger brother. Louise and Buzzy are based on her parents. Blau talked with The News-Letter about the writing process and how she rewrote the book three times. It was first an autobiography in first person. Her agent then suggested changing it to a third person limited point-of-view.
The final version was third person from the kids’ different perspectives. The final version is much richer, Blau said, as it allows a more intimate look into the kids’ lives. The excerpt Blau read at Barnes and Noble was from a chapter that takes place when the girls come home from college.
Anna, 21, and Portia, 18, party it up in Santa Barbara and Blau provides wonderful imagery into their lives, touching on sex, drugs, drinking and family. It took Blau two years to write this novel as she spent time teaching and raising her children while working on it. She mentioned that it was a lot easier getting a book published the second time, thanks to an already-established agent and a optional deal with publishing company HarperCollins.
Once a month, Blau meets with a writer’s group, who she said “shred through all my writing, so I go through the same process as my students.”
She advises to, “be utterly and profoundly true to yourself, keep going — ignore the world, and never internalize criticism;” helpful insight for those looking to pursue a career in the writing field.
After she finished reading, a woman named Sherri Miller approached Blau and introduced herself. In Blau’s first book The Summer of Naked Parties, the protagonist Jamie, has a black crocheted bikini that she bought from one of the artisans who set up shop on the beach in Santa Barbara. Blau herself had purchased a favorite black crochet bikini at the beach in Santa Barbara. The author had a look of disbelief on her face as she realized this was the woman who had made the bathing suit she’d loved so much, so much so that she wrote it into her book.
When asked why she chose to write her biography on her webpage (www.jessicaanyablau.com) via stories of all the dogs she’s had in her life, Blau replied, “I did it to amuse myself. I don’t like talking about myself over and over again — it makes me want to puke!”
