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Check out what’s on the desk of Cosmopolitan’s editor-in-chief. No, not the rolodex…a copy of Maggie Shipstead’s Seating Arrangements!
Check out the video of Maggie Shipstead’s visit to Darien Library or just marvel at how a person walks around the office in those shoes.
Maybe there’s some cosmic significance to the fact that thunderstorms have visited most of the summer weddings I’ve been to, scattering caterers and whipping tent flaps open to let in sheets of rain. Maybe, at a recent wedding, the woman in an enormous black-mesh flying saucer of a hat who ended her toast by plunging, without warning, into an a cappella rendition of “At Last” that segued into “The Glory of Love” was a well-meaning relative taking a risk of her own, or maybe she was a dark angel, full of foreboding.
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The Wedding Effect - NYTimes.com
After reading Maggie Shipstead’s Op-Ed, I can really see where that scene with Wynn’s wedding toast came from in her debut novel Seating Arrangements.
As far as the craft of writing, all my blathering about my hometown and high school boils down to this: don’t write angry. Sleep on it for a few years or a few decades. If you’re writing about someone or somewhere only to prove how silly and despicable that person or place is, your written world will have the flatness that comes from small-heartedness. A story should not be a means of carrying out a vendetta, but perhaps a story might be a way to lay one to rest.
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Maggie Shipstead, “Going Home”
While doing some creepy Google-stalking of Maggie Shipstead in preparation for her event this evening, I came across this great short story that was published in Glimmer Train.
I have some very exciting plans this weekend!
(And if you look closely, you can spot my zebra print dress.)
Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead (RH/Knopf), a debut novel, is the story of ”WASP wedding dysfunction at it’s most hilarious,” as librarian Jennifer Dayton of Darien, CT observed on our GalleyChat. It’s a June Indie Next pick and a B&N Best Book of the Month. Ron Charles in the Washington Post this week calls it “a perfect summer romp” and, “Shipstead’s weave of wit and observation continually delights.” (via EarlyWord: The Publisher | Librarian Connection )
Oh look, Maggie Shipstead, who will be here July 16! And a shout-out to Jen!
“…and when I started drafting Seating Arrangements, I decided early on to include an exploding whale. I didn’t have the plot mapped out at all, but I was strangely confident there would be an opportunity somewhere to work in the whale.”
This exceptional debut author will be here July 16. The full interview is under the cut.
Maggie Shipstead is an outrageously gifted writer, and her assured first novel, Seating Arrangements, is by turns hilarious and deeply moving.
— Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Russo’s blurb for Maggie Shipstead’s Seating Arrangements. She’ll be here July 16.
Courtney Sullivan’s calling it “the best book I’ve read in ages.” Click on the cover to read the first chapter of Maggie Shipstead’s Seating Arrangements, on sale June 12th.
Maggie will be here Monday, July 16. Mark your calendar! And reserve your copy of it today.
