Amy

BIO
I grew up in the Virginia suburbs of Washington DC. I went to college at Virginia Tech and then I moved to New York City where I've lived ever since. After a lot of messing around and changing jobs and getting into various scrapes I finally settled down and started a novel, which ended up taking me five years to write. And instead of writing a novel about New York City I wrote a novel about being a teenager in the 1980s. It's called Polly, and it's a fictional tell-all about bad boyfriends and good bands. HarperCollins shocked me by buying the book and publishing it, and as of January 2007 it's in bookstores. Let's hope the rest is history.
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PRESS
teenwire.com
It's the 1980s, and Polly Clark is looking for love — but finding sex instead
http://www.teenwire.com/infocus/2007/if-20070129p475-polly.p hp
venuszine.com
A young outsider struggles to find identity through a series of bad boyfriends and poor choices
http://venuszine.com/stories/arts_reads/3627.php
Washington DC City Paper – January 2007
"Bryant’s teenage protagonist learns some harsh lessons in the suburban-Virginia coming-of-age tale, usually in the hardest possible ways."
OK! Magazine – January 29, 2007
“…who doesn’t like reading about adolescent angst.”
http://intraweb/titlenet/ReportNet/Trade%20Publicity/P/Polly /OK%20Magazine%2001-29-07.pdf
Jane Magazine – January 2007
Books good enough to schlep around in your purse – “Continuing down memory lane, first-time author Amy Bryant’s novel Polly, focuses on a high school girl growing up in the D.C. suburbs in the 80s.”
Redbook – January 2007
what to do this month - #6 – relive your first love “Bryant describes her adolescent main character’s relationships—both constructive and destructive—with such spot-on clarity, you might feel the fluttering of some of those decades-old butterflies.”
New York Press– January 2007
Along Came Polly– “In a generation of disenchanting Paris Hiltons and collapsible Britneys, it’s refreshing to meet a young woman that navigates the sketchy male waters and ends up afloat by her twenties (not that we’re blaming K-Fed for everything.) The Polly party at Arlene’s Grocery celebrates the release of Bryant’s beautifully voiced book. Pick up a copy and get in an angsty high school mood with a special performance by the band Lesion.”
http://www.nypress.com/20/2/abouttown/about2.cfm
Blurbs
The book rocked. The language was spare yet precise, nasty yet sweet, and it left me hyped up and hungry for more-- sort of like a perfect one-minute and thirty-second hardcore song. I groaned with Polly through every misspelled love note, winced with her through every fumbled sexual encounter on scratchy blankets, and cheered her on through her bumbling, sometimes clownish, but often dangerous cast of boys. It was a real pleasure to read...in fact, I sort of wish there was a Polly Part II or Polly: The Other Random Boys Who Weren't Important Enough to Put In This Book, because I didn't quite get my fill! In any case, I totally envy Amy Bryant for so beautifully and effortlessly capturing what it means to be young and different and sensitive-- I feel like so few writers can really pull it off. I cannot wait what she has in store for us next.- Sara Shepard, author of Pretty Little Liars
Amy Bryant hits all the right notes--her narrator is sarcastic and vulnerable, and always remarkably human. If Polly Clark had gone to my high school, I'd have been in love with her for sure."- Bryan Charles, author of Grab On to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way