Leni Zumas
Leni Zumas is an American writer. Her debut novel, The Listeners, was published by Tin House in 2012 and was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Farewell Navigator: Stories was published in 2008 by Open City. Her fiction has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Columbia: A Journal of Art and Literature, Quarterly West, Keyhole, Salt Hill, Gigantic, Open City, and New York Tyrant.[1]
A graduate of Brown University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst MFA Program, Zumas has received grants and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Millay Colony for the Arts, and Hedgebrook.[2]
Zumas is an assistant professor of English at Portland State University. She has also taught at Columbia University, Hunter College, Eugene Lang College, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNC Asheville, and the Juniper Summer Writing Institute.
Farewell Navigator
"Zumas gives socially awkward, mysteriously gifted and self-destructive outcasts spellbinding, unflinching voice in her debut collection," wrote Publishers Weekly. "It's a powerful, irresistible collection.[3]
L.A. Weekly observed, "It's a rare writer who can bring us closer to people we might cross the street to avoid."[4]
Writer and filmmaker Miranda July said of the collection: "If darkness has ever been your friend, your story is in here."[5]
Zumas was profiled in Poets & Writers magazine's 2008 Debut Fiction issue[6] and featured in the documentary 60 Writers/60 Places (2010) by Michael Kimball and Luca Dipierro.[7]
References
- ^ Open City Books
- ^ vidaweb.org
- ^ Amazon.com
- ^ Marc Weingarten (July 9, 2008), "Janet Sarbanes and Leni Zumas: New short fiction tackles unsettling subject matter," L.A. Weekly
- ^ Farewell Navigator blogspot
- ^ "First Fiction: Our Annual Look at Summer's Debut Stars," Poets & Writers magazine
- ^ Little Burn Films