“Compassionate understanding and humor illuminate this understated yet dazzling work” (Publishers Weekly)-a compelling parable in which two sisters find, among the neglected virtues of the past, a sustenance to carry them into the future. “A fine, unnerving little hermeneutic of love” (Village Voice).
Lawrence Naumoff is a novelist and teacher in the Creative Writing Program at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. He is the winner of a Whiting Award, a Thomas Wolfe award and many other literary prizes. His novel, Taller Women, a cautionary tale, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1992.
A collection of short stories is his latest. It is titled: The Cashmere Sweater and Other Stories. It is the author's first book that is about childhood. All the main characters are children. It's set in the 50s, in the Myers Park section of Charlotte, and Leslie, the central character, is growing up in the neighborhood of, and in the schools, of the mostly entirely WASP and old South families, where he does not quite fit in.
A recent book, also, is: The Longest Mobile Home in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It's purely humor, and the main character is straight out of a mountain folk tale, though the telling of this story is intentionally exaggerated, bordering on parody.
Published prior to The Longest Mobile Home..., was A Southern Tragedy, in Crimson and Yellow, is about the Hamlet, North Carolina chicken plant fire of 1991. The fire exits had been locked by the owners to keep the workers from stealing. 26 workers died, and the tragedy captured the attention of the media as well as everyday citizens. A well-known photograph was taken of a set of kicked, soot smudged footprints on the inside of a fire exit door. The novel won the 2005 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for "the best work of fiction by a North Carolina author." Besides a trade paperback edition, it's also on Kindle.
His other books are listed below, and some excerpts of reviews are also included.
U.S. publications:
The Night of the Weeping Woman, 1988, Morgan Entrekin/Atlantic Monthly Press.
Rootie Kazootie, 1990, Farrar Straus and Giroux.
Taller Women, a cautionary tale, 1992, Harcourt Brace.
Silk Hope, 1994, Harcourt Brace.
A Plan for Women, 1997, Harcourt Brace.
A Southern Tragedy, in Crimson and Yellow, 2005, Zuckerman Cannon/Blair, now a Kindle Book.
Foreign publications:
The Night of the Weeping Women, Rootie Kazootie and Taller Women by Collins Publishers, England.
De Nacht van de Huilende Vrouwen, and, Hoed u Voor Langere Vrouwen, published by De Arbeiderespers, Amsterdam.
Mujeres Mas Altas, published by Seix Barral, Barcelona
Frauen Auf Der Uberhol-Spur, published by Econ Taschenbuch Verlag, Dusseldorf.
Dansa i Mansken, published by Wiken, Finland
The Night of the Weeping Women was bought by a Japanese publisher but never came out.
Film activity(that's been a trip...):
Film version of Silk Hope was a CBS Sunday Night Movie in 1999, starring Farrah Fawcett. This is one of the worst movies you would ever see. It is so lame. It's bound to end up as a joke movie at a Farrah Fawcett retrospective. (Summer, 09....Well,Farrah just died after a terrible couple of years with cancer...so, what I said about the film is still true, but now it's tragic, which makes it so I should rewrite what I said about her and the film, but I'll leave it, as true, all the while being sorry about her death.)
Rootie Kazootie was optioned for years and is currently owned, as far as I know, outright, by the actress Diane Lane. It was optioned for years, before that, by Alphonso and Carlos Cuaron, who wrote a screenplay of the book. They did Children of Men, and other really terrific films. I wish something would happen with that.
The Night of the Weeping Women was optioned for 7 years by well-known casting agent, Mindy Marin of Blue Water Ranch Entertainment. She paid me to write a script, it didn't go anywhere, she paid someone else to work on that script, nothing happened. It's not optioned now, as far as I know.
Awards:
The 2005 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for the novel A Southern Tragedy, in Crimson and Yellow. This prize, given by the N.C. Literary and Historical Society, is presented for "the best work of fiction by a N.C. author," each year.
Winner of Whiting Writer's Award, a Thomas Wolfe Memorial Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Discovery Award, Carolina Quarterly Prize, and other prizes.
Short stories and essays appear in various publications and collections(nothing special, but some okay stories here and there.)
Praise for some of Lawrence Naumoff's books:
Rootie Kazootie(my most fun book, I guess)
"A brilliant comedy of errant romance....Plaintive, madcap, utterly seductive, Naumoff writes about marriage and faithlessness as if he were concocting an eighth Deadly Sin."
-The Washington Post
A Plan for Women(kind of too real I'm sometimes told, seriously literary, if you know what I mean...)
"A provocative novel...When Naumoff exercises his exacting sympathy, understanding and humor on the desperate moments of daily life, he brings such compassion to his characters that their struggles are heroically transformed."
-The New York Times Book Review
The Night of the Weeping Women(Funny sad fictionalized account of a family I was involved with for a number of years. More traditionally Southern than most of my books)
"(Naumoff) looks at marriage honestly. What he sees is outrageously--hilariously, tragically--undeniable; and he sets it all down with effortless-looking brilliance.
-Reynolds Price
Taller Women(about a wild-child raised-by-wolves type teenage girl who falls for a doctor who isn't exactly up to her free spiritness,)
"Taller Women is compellingly radiant meta-fiction about male-female relationships. A scathing indictment of the way things were 'back then', i.e., now. A warning written in dazzling prose variously reminiscent of Pinter, Beckett, Robert Coover and Nathanael West."
-Publishers Weekly
Silk Hope, NC(Two sister's one wild, one very traditional, I like this book a lot, it's funny and moves fast...made into a dreadful film, but, oh well...)
"The book is funny, sad and wise in all the right places."
-The News and Observer
A Southern Tragedy, in Crimson and Yellow(now also a Kindle book...about the Hamlet Chicken Plant fire...a little bit of social realism and very factual to the town and the event...needed to be written as one of the more important industrial/sociological/human condition things that happened in NC)
"With meticulous physical descriptions, Naumoff has written not just an historical novel, or a political one, or one of personal lives and tragedies, but all those things at once."
-Haven Kimmel
(Photo by Steve Exum)
