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Rachel

I am here for Friends and Networking

About Me

From the back cover of THE FIRST HURT:
In this brilliantly original story collection, Rachel Sherman evokes the wonders and horrors of a young woman’s life, from girl to teenager to adult, through crushes, sex, family, and the agonies and ecstasies of finding one’s way. The First Hurt heralds the arrival of a singularly fresh and remarkably assured new voice.
Sherman's beautifully direct and deceptively simple prose produces accessible, shockingly real narratives that combine a disarming sexual edge with great sensitivity and humor. From a high-school girl's crush on her female teacher, to a family's serenity threatened by a sexy Danish au pair, to a girl's sexually outrageous soldier penpal, all the way to a young couple's horrifying yet life-affirming experience of learning to love their brain-injured newborn twins, this collection wends its way around the deepest of struggles with unusual frankness and wisdom.

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My Interests

movies, art, memoirs, fiction, books

I'd like to meet:

Writers, artists, readers, authors

Music:

I don't like music.

Books:

BLURBS and REVIEWS for THE FIRST HURT:
“Rachel Sherman’s stories are real wonders—brave, dangerous fictions full of heart and wit. She gets to the creepy, despairing, hilarious core of adolescence like few writers I’ve read. This is an amazing debut.” —Sam Lipsyte
“Rachel Sherman writes stories like splinters: they get under your skin and stay with you long after you’ve closed the book. These haunting stories are both wonderfully, deeply weird and unsettlingly familiar.” —Judy Budnitz
“In this excellent first collection, the human body is a promise of future happiness and a source of present embarrassment. The prose is another matter: polished, poised, sure of itself. It’s a very grown-up way of recording the queasy intimacies, the frighteningly raw perceptions, and the almost cosmic desolation of a suburban adolescence.” —Benjamin Kunkel
"[Sherman's] pared-down yet oddly poetic prose has the delicacy—and the potential pain—of a dentist's glittering probe. Even though her touch is light, when she hits the nerve, you flinch. [These stories are] sharp, smart, and able to deftly limn the subtle, shifting outlines of alienation and sorrow." —Yona Zeldis McDonough, Bookforum
"A startling debut collection...As in A. M. Homes’s The Safety of Objects, the angst here is set in well-groomed places—developments, summer houses, manicured streets...Sherman’s straightforward prose provides a contrast to her characters’ unsettling behavior." —Lara Tupper, The Believer (click here for full review)
“Laser-cut narratives . . . Full of great, quirky lines, the book would be a good read even if it did condescend to its flawed characters, but it doesn’t. Instead, it takes the constraints of its context seriously, wondering not how its characters will escape—their bodies, their boring neighborhoods, their unreciprocated lust—but how they’ll behave when they can’t.” —Michael Miller, Time Out New York (click here for full review)
"If Sherman were a photographer, she'd be a paparazzo exposing people's most desperately concealed flaws. But unlike a cold soul with a zoom lens, the author renders her subjects clearly and empathetically, and her airy, poetic prose is a perfect match for the brittle environments she describes . . .The mood of the book is downcast, but Sherman's prose never becomes melodramatically glum or tedious . . . Her melodic style, rife with dream imagery, gives these stories a lift—her deceptively revealing dialogue and direct sentences lay her characters bare but never pummel them." —Kirkus
"In a highly promising debut collection of stories, Sherman writes of alienated lower-end white suburbia in a manner that shifts perspectives with an effortlessness that mitigates her characters' sad stuckness . . . By the time one reaches the last story . . . one has given up any resistance to Sherman's grotesques and settled all the way in to a very uncomfortable place." —Publishers Weekly
"[Sherman] seamlessly protrays the world of adolescent girls who, on the brink of sexual experience, find themselves surrounded by adults who cavort like teenagesrs. Sherman's writing is so refined; it is a pleasure to find that her characters are not...Anyone who can remember the stirrings caused by shoulders rubbing in homeroom, or the agonies of squandered teenage love with find a companion in The First Hurt." —Caroline Seklir, The Brooklyn Rail
"Hilarious and disturbing . . . Sherman deals with sexuality on candid terms, depicting the fine line between what we want and what we know with precision. The simplicity of Sherman's prose allows the reader speedy entry into the painfully familiar world of adolescence and young adulthood. There are few fireworks here, but no less bang." —Elizabeth Crane, Time Out Chicago
"Sherman's writing is sharp, hard, and honest; there's a fearlessness in her work, an I'm-not-afraid-to-say-this quality. Becasue she knows that most of us have thought the same but didn't have the guts to say it." —Nina Maclaughlin, Boston Phoenix
"Rather than a mountain-steep line that stops abruptly in adolescence, the learning curve of the human body is gradual and endless. Each age offers its own set of embarrassments and obsessions; the characters in Rachel Sherman's debut short-story collection are no exception...Thankfully, these unsettling stories avoid florid descriptions and tidy resolutions. Like her characters' own self-assessment, Sherman's spare, detatched style yields a somewhat cold take on sexuality, reminiscent of A.M. Homes and Mary Gaitskill." —Karla Starr, Seattle Weekly

My Blog

Time to sign up! Intermediate/Advanced Fiction Class

This one is short-only 6 classes. Intermediate/Advanced Fiction Class Are you almost ready to commit to a piece of work but need help deciding what you want to focus on? Do you have a novel or short s...
Posted by Rachel on Tue, 29 Apr 2008 11:25:00 PST

New Story on Fanzine

http://thefanzine.com/sections.php?s=fiction&id=235&a=articl esThis is my story called THE SITTER. Danny Jock did the artwork-I think he is excellent. It is so interesting to see someone else's interpr...
Posted by Rachel on Mon, 21 Apr 2008 06:17:00 PST

New York Tyrant Reading: Rachel Sherman and John Haskell

Rachel Sherman and John Haskell read for New York TyrantWednesday, February 13th 7-9pmKGB Bar85 East 4th Street Rachel Sherman is the author of The First Hurt (Open City Books, 2006). H...
Posted by Rachel on Wed, 06 Feb 2008 09:52:00 PST

TALK SHOW 8 ON FANZINE

http://www.thefanzine.com/sections.php?s=columns    
Posted by Rachel on Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:04:00 PST

NEW ISSUE OF NEW YORK TYRANT

The newest issue of New York Tyrant just hit the stands. I have a piece in it called LAST WILL. There are also stories by Gary Lutz, Michael Kimball, Gordon Lish, and other greats. Check it out. It's ...
Posted by Rachel on Sun, 20 Jan 2008 07:49:00 PST

Books Out Loud Dance Party and Reading

BOOKS OUT LOUD DANCE PARTY! ..eof Product Name-->..bof Product description --> Books Out Loud Dance Party.Join essentials, wünderarts, and many more as we celebrate the written word with music, rea...
Posted by Rachel on Sat, 05 Jan 2008 06:19:00 PST

ReadyMade Magazine

Check out the most recent (I believe the "Holiday" issue of ReadyMade Magazine. I have a story in it called TREE ENVY. It is actually an essay, but only half-true. Coming up: a story in NY Tyrant. ...
Posted by Rachel on Tue, 11 Dec 2007 02:55:00 PST

10/7 Reading at Mo Pitkins: Rachel Sherman, Justin Taylor, Lucy Corin

Reading at Mo Pitkins   Rachel Sherman - Lucy Corin - Justin Taylor   34 Avenue A between 2nd and 3rd 7pm on October 7th, 2007   Rachel Sherman is the author of book of short stories TH...
Posted by Rachel on Wed, 03 Oct 2007 07:38:00 PST

The Reading Series at the Kettle of Fish --- WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26th, at 7PM

MATT HOOBAN will bat lead-off and present an excerpt from his novel-in-progress, THE BRASS RING. Next up, is RACHEL SHERMAN. Rachel is a Columbia MFA in Fiction Writing and her collection of stories, ...
Posted by Rachel on Fri, 21 Sep 2007 05:11:00 PST

Tagged! Eight things about me...

Eight Things"Each player starts with eight random facts/habits or embarrassing things about themselves. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules...
Posted by Rachel on Mon, 17 Sep 2007 05:14:00 PST