Dawn at Long Reach #1 by William Betcher

Laurie Stone

Laurie Stone is author of the novel Starting with Serge (Doubleday), the memoir collection Close to the Bone (Grove), and Laughing in the Dark (Ecco), a collection of her writing on comic performance. A longtime writer for the Village Voice (1975-99), she has been theater critic for The Nation, critic-at-large on Fresh Air, and a regular writer for Ms., New York Woman, and Viva. She has received grants from The New York Foundation for the Arts, the Kittredge Foundation, Yaddo, MacDowell, VCCA, Albee, Saltonstall, Djerassi, Millay Colony, Ragdale, Poets & Writers, and in 1996 she won the Nona Balakian prize in excellence in criticism from the National Book Critics Circle. She has published numerous memoir essays and stories in such publications Ms., TriQuarterly, The Literary Review, Threepenny Review, Exquisite Corpse, and Creative Nonfiction. Her short fiction and nonfiction has appeared in the numerous anthologies. Her reviews can be seen in the L.A. Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, and Newsday. She has served as writer-in-residence at Pratt Institute, Old Dominion University, Thurber House, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and Muhlenberg College. She has taught at the Paris Writers Workshop, and many other venues. In 1993 and 2001 she received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts in the category of Nonfiction Literature. She served on the Board of the National Book Critics. She is currently at work on My Life as an Animal, a Memoir in Stories and The Pain of Language, a collection of essays.