Gayle Brandeis
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Gayle Brandeis is the author of Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write (HarperSanFrancisco), Dictionary Poems (Pudding House Publications) and The Book of Dead Birds: A Novel (HarperCollins), which won Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize for Fiction in Support of a Literature of Social Change.[citation needed] Kingsolver calls the book “lyrical, imaginative, beautifully crafted, and deeply intelligent”; Toni Morrison, one of the judges, notes it “has an edgy beauty that enhances perfectly the seriousness of its contents.” O Magazine names it “a moving and perceptive first novel.” Both Fruitflesh and The Book of Dead Birds were chosen as selections for the BookSense list, compiled by the American Booksellers Association. Brandeis's second novel, Self Storage, will be published by Ballantine in 2007.
Gayle’s poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies (such as Salon.com, Nerve.com, The Mississippi Review, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency) and have received several awards, including the QPB/Story Magazine Short Story Award, a Barbara Mandigo Kelley Peace Poetry Award, and a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. Her essay on the meaning of liberty was one of three included in the Statue of Liberty’s Centennial time capsule in 1986. In 2004, the Writer Magazine honored Gayle with a Writer Who Makes a Difference Award.
Gayle Brandeis holds a BA in “Poetry and Movement: Arts of Expression, Meditation and Healing” from the University of Redlands and an MFA in Creative Writing/Fiction from Antioch University. She is writer in residence for the Mission Inn Foundation's Family Voices Project, and lives in Riverside, CA with her husband and two children.
