Salon.com > A. M. Homes

Molly Ringwald: “How many actresses do you know that write?”

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 21:54:00 +0000

Here’s what you should know about Molly Ringwald. 1. Despite whatever you think you know about her — there’s more. 2. She is exactly how you imagine her to be; smart, funny, self-aware. 3. She has a lot more experience living with what it’s like to be Molly Ringwald than you ever will.

She’s got special powers, and by that I mean she’s truly exceptional — if you spend a couple of hours with her, you’ll want her as your best friend. And in the future when things happen — and they will -- you’ll think, Molly would really get this. Molly would know how absurd and cool it is all at the same time. And you’d be right.

I met Molly Ringwald for lunch in Los Angeles to talk about her new book, "When It Happens to You: A Novel in Stories," and found her to be all of the above and more. She’s intense, thoughtful, incredibly well-read and serious about her work as a fiction writer. Her stories deftly capture the confusion and heartbreak of betrayal, the power of family secrets, and the struggle to find and maintain both autonomy and intimacy within a marriage.

A. M. Homes

Thu, 05 Oct 2000 19:00:00 +0000

A. M. Homes is the author of the novels The End of Alice, In the Country of Mothers, and Jack, as well as the short story collection The Safety of Objects. Her fiction has been translated into eight languages, and her nonfiction has appeared in magazines such as Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, Mirabella, and ArtForum. She teaches in the writing program at Columbia University and lives in New York City.

"I found myself rapt from beginning to end, fascinated by Homes' single-minded talent for provocation." -The New York Times Book Review

Listen to Homes reading an excerpt from Music For Torching.

Audio:
Excerpt from "Music for Torching" (5:34)

All My Habits Are Bad

Mon, 26 Oct 1998 09:19:00 +0000

Grace Paley is the sagacious elf of American letters; her spirit, both in
person and in her work, is a magically contagious amalgam of compassion and
incredible honesty. In three volumes of short stories, she's chronicled the
lives of her now-infamous characters -- mostly women, often leftists,
Jewish and living in New York City -- as they struggle with marriages,
friendships, political beliefs and motherhood. In 1994, her "Collected
Stories" won the National Book Award, and this year Farrar Straus and
Giroux published her first collection of nonfiction, "Just as I Thought."