Diesel, A Bookstore in Oakland is pleased to welcome Mary Gaitskill to discuss and sign her new collection of stories, Don't Cry, her first in more than ten years, on Wednesday, March 10th, at 7pm.

In “College Town l980,” young people adrift in Ann Arbor debate the meaning of personal strength at the start of the Reagan era; in the urban fairy tale “Mirrorball,” a young man steals a girl’s soul during a one-night stand; in “The Little Boy,” a woman haunted by the death of her former husband is finally able to grieve through a mysterious encounter with a needy child; and in “The Arms and Legs of the Lake,” the fallout of the Iraq war becomes disturbingly real for the disparate passengers on a train going up the Hudson--three veterans, a liberal editor, a soldier’s uncle, and honeymooners on their way to Niagara Falls.

Mary Gaitskill's stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories (1993), and The O. Henry Prize Stories (1998). Her story “Secretary” was the basis for the film of the same name. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, she teaches creative writing at Syracuse University. She lives in New York.

Don't Cry: Stories (Hardcover)

By Mary Gaitskill

$23.95

ISBN-13: 9780375424199
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Pantheon, 03/01/2009

Following the extraordinary success of her novel Veronica, Mary Gaitskill returns with a luminous new collection of stories - her first in more than ten years. Each story delivers the powerful, original language, and the dramatic engagement of the intelligent mind with the craving body - or of the intelligent body with the craving mind - that is characteristic of Gaitskill’s fiction. As intense as Bad Behavior, her first collection of stories, Don’t Cry reflects the profound enrichment of life experience. As the stories unfold against the backdrop of American life over the last thirty years, they describe how our social conscience has evolved while basic human truths - “the crude cinder blocks of male and female down in the basement, holding up the house,” as one character puts it - remain unchanged.

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Veronica (Paperback)

By Mary Gaitskill

$14.95

ISBN-13: 9780375727856
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Vintage, 07/01/2006

Alison and Veronica meet amid the nocturnal glamour of 1980s New York: One is a young model stumbling away from the wreck of her career, the other an eccentric middle-aged office temp. Over the next twenty years their friendship will encompass narcissism and tenderness, exploitation and self-sacrifice, love and mortality. Moving seamlessly from present and past, casting a fierce yet compassionate eye on two eras and their fixations, the result is a work of timeless depth and moral power.

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Best New American Voices 2009 (Paperback)

By John Kulka (Editor), Mary Gaitskill, Natalie Danford (Editor)

$14.00

ISBN-13: 9780156034319
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Mariner Books, 09/01/2008

Critically acclaimed novelist and short-story writer Mary Gaitskill continues the tradition of identifying the best young writers on the cusp of their careers in this year's volume of Best New American Voices." "Here are stories culled from hundreds of nominations submitted by writing programs such as the Iowa Writers' Workshop and Johns Hopkins and from summer conferences such as Sewanee and Bread Loaf. Joshua Ferris, Julie Orringer, Adam Johnson, William Gay, Lauren Groff, Rattawut Lapcharoensap, Maile Meloy, Amanda Davis, and John Murray are just some of the acclaimed authors whose early work has appeared in this series since its launch in 2000. Discover for yourself the dazzling variety of great fiction being produced in the top writers' workships--with a complete list of contact information included--and hear the best new American voices here first.

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