Laura Glen Louis, Author | Laura Glen Louis

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LAURA GLEN LOUIS

Author of Talking in the Dark ,

a Barnes and Noble Discover book, and

recipient of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize

for short fiction, Laura Glen Louis has had work included in Best American Short Stories .

Some, like elephants is her first

book of poems.

Some, like elephants

Poetry

El León Literary Arts

Talking in the Dark

Short Stories

Harcourt, Inc.

BOOKS

Some, like elephants

Poetry

May 2010

El León Literary Arts

Chapbook, Limited Edition

Talking in the Dark

Short Stories

2001

Harcourt, Inc.

Hardcover

Talking in the Dark

Short Stories

2002

A Harvest Book/Harcourt, Inc.

Paperback

BUY
BUY
BUY REVIEWS
Praise for Some, like elephants"With the roughened beauty of subverted and torqued form, Laura Glen Louis gives us her 'jet jewels,' this collection of elegies and laments. Hers is a music that flirts with and then---in stanza after stanza--- bypasses tradition. In doing so, she proves her own prosodic dictum: 'For honoring the dead there are no rules.' Her only rule is that of an evocative, resonant line." Paulann Petersen, Poet Laureate of Oregon Author of A Bride of Wild Escape Laura Glen Louis approaches the topic of death fearlessly and with something akin to love. Whether friend or foe, death is ultimately the prism through which our lives are most clearly viewed. Some, like elephants is a book of tremendous nerve and beauty. Zoe FitzGerald Carter, author of Imperfect Endings"Of all places, it's through death's window that Louis brings her characters vividly to life -- with humanity and mystery -- using a blitz of techniques: ambiguities, gnomic allusions, oblique lines, syncopated rhythms, all sprinkled with an occasional, gratifying burst into crisp, passionate lyrics." Clive Matson Author of Chalcedony's Songs"...haunting debut poetry collection..." East Bay ExpresssReviews of Talking in the Dark"The individuals in Laura Glen Louis's Talking in the Dark may be Chinese-Americans new to the West Coast, but more than anything else they are characters for whom the experience of love demands the ultimate migration) from safety to omnipresent danger...Fierce and astringent...[Talking in the Dark] has its share of superb and wise stories." The New York Times Book Review"Striking debut collection...Spare, insightful, and refreshingly candid, Louis' collection finds strength in vying equally for the readers head and heart...Engaging, enlightening tales." O Magazine "A debut collection of lean, sinewy prose and tightly compressed emotional implications, all related to matters of the heart... Understatement seems to come naturally to her. Economy is her watchword." Boston Review"A stunning new collection...The tales [Louis] spins are universal ones of love and loss...Highly recommended." Library Journal "Surprising debut...What Louis offers is a rhythmic notion of ebb and flow, give and take, collapse and reconstruction...She has created stories with depth, and the people who inhabit them consistently ring true." The Boston Globe"Beautifully wrought stories...Louis' sophisticated and fluid use of a shifting point-of-view works to underscore the complexity of what might at first appear to be a simple tale." San Francisco Chronicle"Louis is as interested in the internal debate of her characters as in their actions, which gives her stories an exquisite...stillness. Her precision of language means 'Dark' should appeal to readers who think that too much of modern fiction depends on the approximately right word or image--and not the exactly right ones. For connoisseurs." The Detroit Free Press "In spare refreshing prose, Louis writes of characters burned by love and searching for reprieve in this debut collection...It is easy to see a gift for the compact form in this newcomer whose honesty doesn't always require a perfectly stitched-up denouement." Publishers Weekly "There is...an archetypal quality to her work in a way many of her characters are made, and at times undone, by love." Poets Praise for Some, like elephants"With the roughened beauty of subverted and torqued form, Laura Glen Louis gives us her 'jet jewels,' this collection of elegies and laments. Hers is a music that flirts with and then---in stanza after stanza--- bypasses tradition. In doing so, she proves her own prosodic dictum: 'For honoring the dead there are no rules.' Her only rule is that of an evocative, resonant line." Paulann Petersen, Poet Laureate of Oregon Author of A Bride of Wild Escape Laura Glen Louis approaches the topic of death fearlessly and with something akin to love. Whether friend or foe, death is ultimately the prism through which our lives are most clearly viewed. Some, like elephants is a book of tremendous nerve and beauty. Zoe FitzGerald Carter, author of Imperfect Endings"Of all places, it's through death's window that Louis brings her characters vividly to life -- with humanity and mystery -- using a blitz of techniques: ambiguities, gnomic allusions, oblique lines, syncopated rhythms, all sprinkled with an occasional, gratifying burst into crisp, passionate lyrics." Clive Matson Author of Chalcedony's Songs"...haunting debut poetry collection..." East Bay ExpresssReviews of Talking in the Dark"The individuals in Laura Glen Louis's Talking in the Dark may be Chinese-Americans new to the West Coast, but more than anything else they are characters for whom the experience of love demands the ultimate migration) from safety to omnipresent danger...Fierce and astringent...[Talking in the Dark] has its share of superb and wise stories." The New York Times Book Review"Striking debut collection...Spare, insightful, and refreshingly candid, Louis' collection finds strength in vying equally for the readers head and heart...Engaging, enlightening tales." O Magazine "A debut collection of lean, sinewy prose and tightly compressed emotional implications, all related to matters of the heart... Understatement seems to come naturally to her. Economy is her watchword." Boston Review"A stunning new collection...The tales [Louis] spins are universal ones of love and loss...Highly recommended." Library Journal "Surprising debut...What Louis offers is a rhythmic notion of ebb and flow, give and take, collapse and reconstruction...She has created stories with depth, and the people who inhabit them consistently ring true." The Boston Globe"Beautifully wrought stories...Louis' sophisticated and fluid use of a shifting point-of-view works to underscore the complexity of what might at first appear to be a simple tale." San Francisco Chronicle"Louis is as interested in the internal debate of her characters as in their actions, which gives her stories an exquisite...stillness. Her precision of language means 'Dark' should appeal to readers who think that too much of modern fiction depends on the approximately right word or image--and not the exactly right ones. For connoisseurs." The Detroit Free Press "In spare refreshing prose, Louis writes of characters burned by love and searching for reprieve in this debut collection...It is easy to see a gift for the compact form in this newcomer whose honesty doesn't always require a perfectly stitched-up denouement." Publishers Weekly "There is...an archetypal quality to her work in a way many of her characters are made, and at times undone, by love." Poets & Writers"The excitement of reading Laura Glen Louis' debut story collection...derives not only from its prose but also from the possibilities she sees in her characters...Louis guides her characters through their changes with a firm, compassionate hand." The Washington Post Book World"This collection heralds the arrival of a major new talent in American fiction. These stories are extraordinary; they move like express trains, then slow down at just the right moment and provide unerringly accurate and poignant insights into what is too often hushed in the human heart." Robert Bausch Author of A Hole in the Earth

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Reviews & Critical Praise

Praise for Some, like elephants

Reviews of Talking in the Dark

Honors

Katherine Anne Porter Prize

Best American Short Stories

Barnes & Noble Discover book:

Talking in the Dark

VIDEO

Author Reading

"An Exacting Man"

by Laura Glen Louis

Written in honor of Alfred Peet

(1920-2007), founder of Peet's

Coffee & Tea, this poem appears

in the chapbook, Some, like elephants .

Laura reading at the Fond Farewell

series, Berkeley, September 2009.

Laura Glen Louis / An Exacting Man

AUDIO

Author Reading

"Alight"

by Laura Glen Louis

Written in memoriam of

Ken Durling (1952-2007),

educator, musician,

composer, photographer,

and friend.

This poem appears in the chapbook,

Some, like elephants .

alight_monday_t3 mp3

Click Speaker Once to

Start or Stop

Photos by Ken Durling

EXCERPTS
First lines from Some, like elephants, poetryI'd not lived till I felt the singeof Death's hot breath as He rushed past "An attempt"Five crowded in an officeSix, if you counted the doctor "Five Crowded in an Office"She came skittering across the road like a waterbirdSome massive-winged creature on impossible legs "The Burden of Wings"Some slash the skywith fighter kitesOblivious to the graces "Some, like elephants"My own demise?An uneventful life "The hour of the stone"..................................................................................................Excerpts from Talking in the Dark, short stories From "Thirty Yards" Since the birth of her daughter, Mrs. Chang had been unshakeable in her fear that Christine would die an early and violent death. That no one believed the story did not prevent it from being repeated by the sisters---Christine's maternal aunts---of how, when she was born, Mrs. Chang saw the shadow of death's lips brush her baby's own in an obscene and audible kiss, and how the baby's insatiable eyes followed the ghost assassin as he slid out of her bedroom like a wayward bead of mercury. For years Mrs. Chang hounded her husband with visions of a demon so unlike them, who would take Christine for his bride and would possess her so completely, they would then be left to wonder had she ever been theirs at all. For the first year of Christine's life, Mrs. Chang refused to go to America. In that land of strange men, anyone could be the assassin of her dreams. Ever preoccupied with her daughter's welfare, she forgot that the first line of attack is to get rid of the guard, and this one oversight cost her her life. A week after George's visit: she wasn't looking, she wasn't careful. She left the hospital after her shift and a swerving car struck her dead...................................................................................................From "Divining the Waters"Stevie B said he was sitting across the street (because he was allowed to go around the corner but not to cross the street), and for the better part of an hour he watched Buck carry boxes from the curb into his new house, before dragging him home to see his new Lab puppy with the enormous feet. "No, no, no," Phil insisted. "I found Buck outside the hardware store after he put his fist through the window; isn't he our neighbor, and aren't we, as parents, supposed to look after all the children?" Babette licked the chocolate icing off her finger and said, "He asked me where I lived but I didn't tell him, Mom."Rosemary counted out fourteen candles and said that Buck came to her door a wet eleven and glanced past her to the placid pool on the other side of the atrium; that Babette hid in her room and changed her suit several times before coming out in a white piqué bikini trimmed in red rickrack, and she was nine; that Stevie B was five and raced Buck to the deck, where they did cannonballs solid for an hour; that Buck ate every snack she set out on the patio table and returned the next afternoon to see if he could sustain the dream. And because her story was infused with more detail, the family secretly conceded to her version.Buck would say that he was swimming his way through the neighborhood as the pool at his new house was unfinished. By traveling in an ever-widening circle and targeting a different house each day, he thought to avoid wearing out his welcome and stay out of trouble until the end of summer. Never did he expect to meet a Rosemary Berg, or to have his childhood handed back to him. But, no one asked Buck for his version. Instead they sang. They said, Make a wish and blow. Then they put their hands together and clapped.He came every day that summer and his place at Rosemary's table was everyone's assumption. He didn't have to be funny or smart; he just had to behave, knowing that without blood security, they could, at any time, just shut the door...................................................................................................From "Tea"Wu drew a finger along her spine, a cue that she needed to stand taller in the one-legged pose called Tree. Vrksasana. Wu drew his finger on up her neck and said, ten minutes. In the time it takes to boil water for tea, to steep it, he said, you could do your daily practice. That's all he asked of his students: ten minutes. With the free leg bent, Sheila grounded her standing foot and stretched her leg, her torso, her neck, her arms up, up, up. She struggled for stillness, which even as she was doing it she knew to be oxymoronic. Wu continued around the room, a hundred and fifty-five pounds of bald attention. He led them through a silent string of standing poses they could do against the base of the kitchen counter while waiting for this ten minute tea to boil, to steep. Trikonasana. Virabhadrasana. Adho Mukha Svanasana. Triangle. Warrior. Downward-facing dog. To rest in between they did Uttanasana, a straight-legged, palms-on-the-floor forward bend from the waist, which kids called rag doll, and which Chapman called fuck me.The water boiled. Sheila reached for the kettle. Wet hair skimmed bare shoulders. Chapman licked a drop of water from her blond curls. Holding her, he stirred gunpowder tea into her cup. His hands are large and calloused, workmans hands. Passing him on the street, who would think: biochemist, researcher, rearranger of genes---a man who might any day unlock codes that could save lives? Sometimes she wouldn't see him for days and she wondered whose life was he really trying to save? The tea leaves unfurled. Chapman pressed her pubis against the lip of the counter. He unhooked her bra, slipped one hand under the lycra, the other under her skirt, dipped his fingers wherever they both wanted, and made her give it all up. The tea steamed from her Russian glass cup. Before it ripened, he was gone.Once or twice, Sheila did try ten minute yoga as her tea steeped, but most times she grabbed a shower, straightened the bed, skimmed articles about gene manipulations or stockpiled viruses or the newest photos from the Hubbell telescope that once again enlarged the universe whose limits she couldnt begin to imagine. She collated her production reports (an on-line drugstore) and stuffed them in her bag.Over the weeks, she realized Wu was right: much could be accomplished in the time it took to make tea. In the time it took to make tea, the direction of a persons life could change. In the time it took for the kettle to whistle and for her to spoon out the leaves, she could read the mail, including a letter from Providence saying she should come in again to redo her pap. In the time it took for the water to be infused she realized that once again, as had been his recent habit, Chapman had given her pleasure but took none for himself. In the time it took the tea on her desk to darken, she could fire the first person on the single-spaced sheet her boss handed her after citing several quarters of seven-figure losses. Ten a.m. By noon she would have to fire three single mothers. One had an advanced degree in medieval art and an autistic child. Sheila stood, nauseous, and tried to comprehend her falling trajectory from programmer to manager to executioner. The Earl Grey released its fragrance of bergamot oil, the last sweet thing of her day.Copyright © Laura Glen Louis. All rights reserved.

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Excerpts

Some, like elephants:

First Lines

Talking in the Dark:

Excerpts

"Thirty Yards"

"Divining the Waters"

"Tea"

BIO

Laura Glen Louis

Laura Glen Louis the author of the acclaimed story collection, Talking in the Dark , a Barnes and Noble Discover book. Recipient of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for short fiction, she has had work included in Best American Short Stories .

Born in Macao, Louis immigrated at five, attended the University of California at Berkeley, and lives on the west coast.

She is at work on her second book of poetry, her novel, and a book-length work of non-fiction. With composer Larry London, she is collaborating on a cycle of art songs, Under her spell.

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PLAY AUDIO HIDDEN

Author Reading

"Alight"

by Laura Glen Louis

Written in memoriam of

Ken Durling (1952-2007),

educator, musician,

composer, photographer,

and friend.

This poem appears in the chapbook,

Some, like elephants .

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alight_monday_t3 mp3

Click Speaker Once

to Start or Stop

Photos by Ken Durling

Q AND A
Nine years between Talking in the Dark and Some, like elephants. Why?The only thing I do fast is drive.What are you working on?P2. Poetry collection.Novel. A novel. Where do you write?In bed, on the couch, at my desk. I've written in Berkeley. San Francisco. Sea Ranch. Shanghai. Lenox. Lummi Island. Maui. Trinity Alps. Paris. Povo. Munich. Malaucène. On trains. In hotel/motel/ pensione bathrooms while the family slept. Waiting rooms. Parking lots waiting for lacrosse games to start. On napkins. Coasters. Paper towels. Symphony programs. Comp books. Mostly comp books. Black Pilot pens. A page from a notebook:July 9, 09. Hermaphroditus. Son of Hermes and Aphrodite. Fused with the nymph Salmacis, who alas, not only lost her self, but her name.How does being Asian inform your writing?My first response to the world is as a human being. Everything else comes after: being a woman, of a certain age, an immigrant, Cantonese, all secondary. That said, I bring an Asian sensibility to my work: subtlety, understatement, being elliptical, leaving things unsaid, no easy answers. Sometimes no answers at all. How did you start writing? How did you start writing poetry?Death and dying. Even the love stories have their germ in loss. We don't get to choose our muse. How does writing poetry differ from writing prose? It's all writing. Word choice, dramatic effect, engaging the reader. Frisson. Concision. But poetry is perhaps more intimate.You could argue that poetry has meter and rhyme. But, good prose definitely has a cadence. Really good prose mesmerizes. It may not be formal, but there's cadence, music. Certainly the writer brings her attention to bear on how words fall off the tongue, how they butt up next against each other, how vowels and consonants and rhythm add to dramatic effect. Why do we like to read stories aloud? How could the outlaws in Fahrenheit 451 memorize entire novels if those classics weren't musical and symphonic?When I was working on the novel a friend said I was not a novelist, but a poet. My poems? Mortised and tenoned with narrative.Do you teach?Teaching is a noble profession; also an extroverted way of being in the world, counter to what this writer needs. I salute any writer who can teach, and teach well. Do I have students? No. But, as I have learned pretty much everything I know about writing not only from writing and rewriting, but also from reading the work of the exceptional and the not, you could say that if I have readers---and I do have readers---then I teach.You were Alfred Peet's bookkeeper. What else have you done?I've been a claims girl, receptionist, store manager, waitress at the No Name Café, film editor, and board president of a community chorus. I worked for one day as an extra on Hammett, and was acutely aware of my own anachronisms. I didn't have it in me to shuffle, head down, in coolie clothes. Nora Charles, that I could do. Silk charmeuse cut on the bias. The wit. I signed on just to meet Wim Wenders, who made The American Friend.What does being an extra have in common with being a writer?If you do your job well, you disappear.Avocation?I sing. I must. Call it song lust. What do people say about your work?Laura says what everyone else is thinking but is afraid to say out loud.You can't write like this without having lived.You're the last person in the world I thought could do this. I don't understand it.Copyright © Laura Glen Louis. All rights reserved.

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Q and A

APPEARANCES

Appearances

Recent Readings from Some, like Elephants

West Coast Live

with Sedge Thompson

Freight and Salvage

2020 Addison

Berkeley CA 94704

www.wcl.org

http://www.thefreight.org/west-coast-live-8

KALW 91.7 FM San Francisco, Oakland, San Mateo

Find other radio affiliates: http://www.wcl.org/affiliates.html

Mrs. Dalloway's

2904 College Avenue

Berkeley, CA 94705

(510) 704-8222

www.mrsdalloways.com

Past Guest Speaker/Lecturer Appearances

University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Davis

University of Colorado, Colorado Springs

University of California, Berkeley Extension

California Institute of Integral Studies

Los Angeles Times Book Fair, Short Story Panel

Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Short Story Panel

CREDITS

Credits

1 Barbara Hall

2 Peets Coffee & Tea Archive

3 Martha Cook

4 Martha Cook

5 Jan Wurm

6 Silvia Matheus

7 Zhi-heng Huang

8 Andrea Young

9 Mike Papciak

"An Exacting Man" video: Silvia Matheus

"Alight" slide show photographs: Ken Durling

Used by kind permission of the Durling family

Silvia Matheus

www.bayimproviser.com/artist...

Jan Wurm

www.janwurm.com

Andrea Young

www.andreayoungarts.com

Ken Durling

http://photo.net/photos/kendurling

Leslie Torvik, Web Design

email

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CONTACT

Contact

Author:

Info_lauraglenlouis.com

or use the contact form.

Publicist:

Liz O'Connell-Gates

lizocg_sbcglobal.net

Publisher:

El León Literary Arts www.elleonliteraryarts.org

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Laura will be reading from Some, like elephants at:Mrs. Dalloways2904 College AvenueBerkeley, CA 94705(510) 704-8222Thursday August 19, 20107:30 pmwww.mrsdalloways.com

Copyright © 2010-2011 All Rights Reserved Laura Glen Louis Web Design:Leslie Torvik
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