Blueprints for Building Better Girls (Simon & Schuster)
Elissa Schappell visits Skylight Books to read and sign her acclaimed short story collection, Blueprints for Building Better Girls!
"Elissa Schappell's voice is so lively, smart, and honest--reading these stories is like sitting on a bench with a great friend and talking for hours about what's really going on. Schappell's such an incisive observer but she sees what she sees with big generosity and humor and warmth--what a pleasure to read these bursts of life!" --Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
"The women in Elissa Schappell's new story collection ought to come with a warning label. Danger: Contents under pressure. Emotionally sensitive compounds may be present. Toxic sentiments could be released if disturbed or shaken. . . . Keep hands out of reach at all times, because also: These women bite. . . . Schappell's stories acutely evoke the disorientation induced in women by our culture's barrage of mixed messages . . . . [Schappell] is a diva of the encapsulating phrase, capable of conveying a Pandora's box of feeling in a single line." --Jennifer B. McDonald, The New York Times Book Review
Elissa Schappell is the author of two books of fiction, Blueprints for Building Better Girls, and Use Me, which was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway award, a New York Times Notable Book, and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. She is co-editor with Jenny Offill of two anthologies, The Friend Who Got Away and Money Changes Everything. She is a Contributing Editor at Vanity Fair where she writes the Hot Type column, and a Founding Editor, now Editor-at-Large, of Tin House. She teaches in the creative writing department at NYU and lives in Brooklyn.
Photo of the author by Emily Tobey.