Have you thought about joining a book club but grew tired of the drama, the scheduling, the shrieking: I HAVEN’T READ THE BOOK YET!? Afraid to commit to a monthly book club but want to check out a few new books? Want to chat with today’s most buzzworthy authors, LIVE? From the comfort of your own home? Well, pull up a chair, put on a pot of tea and charge your phone, because Writers Revealed presents the WR Virtual Book Club.

Each month you’ll have the opportunity to chat live with one of our authors and score a free book in the process. There is no commitment to the club - you pick and choose which live chats you want to participate in, and we’ll send you a copy of the book a month in advance of the chat date.

Interested in learning more? Send an email to writersrevealed -at- writersrevealed -dot- com with the subject line: VIRTUAL BOOK CLUB, and we’ll fill you in on all the details.

*At this time, we can only ship books to U.S. & Canada.

October 28, 2007 Amy Bloom, author of Away

SLOTS FOR THIS DATE HAVE BEEN FILLED.

Panoramic in scope, Away is the epic and intimate story of young Lillian Leyb, a dangerous innocent, an accidental heroine. When her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, Lillian comes to America alone, determined to make her way in a new land. When word comes that her daughter, Sophie, might still be alive, Lillian embarks on an odyssey that takes her from the world of the Yiddish theater on New York’s Lower East Side, to Seattle’s Jazz District, and up to Alaska, along the fabled Telegraph Trail toward Siberia. All of the qualities readers love in Amy Bloom’s work–her humor and wit, her elegant and irreverent language, her unflinching understanding of passion and the human heart–come together in the embrace of this brilliant novel, which is at once heartbreaking, romantic, and completely unforgettable.

About the Author: Amy Bloom is the author of the acclaimed story collection Come to Me, a National Book Award finalist, and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award; a novel, Love Invents Us, and a nonfiction work, Normal. Bloom teaches creative writing at Yale University, where she is a fellow of Calhoun College.

Click here to visit Amy Bloom’s website.

This beautiful, effulgent book sped me forward word by word, out of the room I was in and into Amy Bloom’s world. This is a wonderful novel, a cosmos that transcends its time period and grabs us without compromise. Lillian’s astonishing journey, driven by a mother’s love, will be with me for a long, long time.
–Ron Carlson, author of The Speed of Light

November 25, 2007 Carol Muske-Dukes, author of Channeling Mark Twain

SLOTS FOR THIS DATE ARE OPEN! EMAIL WRITERSREVEALED -AT- WRITERSREVEALED -DOT- COM FOR DETAILS.

Fresh out of graduate school, Holly Mattox is a young, newly married, and spirited poet who moves to New York City from Minnesota in the early 1970’s. Hoping to share her passion for words and social justice, Holly is also determined to contribute to the politically charged atmosphere around her. Her mission: to successfully teach a poetry workshop at the Women’s House of Detention on Rikers Island, only minutes from Manhattan.

Having listened to her mother recite verse by heart all her life, Holly has always been drawn to poetry. Yet until she stands before a class made up of prisoners and detainees–all troubled women charged with a variety of crimes–even Holly does not know the full power that language can possess. Words are the only weapon left to many of these outspoken women: the hooker known as Baby Ain’t (as in “Baby Ain’t Nobody Better!”); Gene/Jean, who is mid-sex change; drug mule Never Delgado; and Akilah Malik, a leader of the Black Freedom Front.

One woman in particular will change Holly’s life forever: Polly Lyle Clement, an inmate awaiting transfer to a mental hospital upstate, one day announces that she is a descendant of Mark Twain and is capable of channeling his voice. And so begins Holly’s descent into the dark recesses of the criminal justice system, where in an attempt to understand and help her students she will lose her perspective on the nature of justice–and risk ruining everything stable in her life. As Holly begins an affair with a fellow poet–who claims to know her better than she knows herself–she finds herself adrift between two ends of thesocial and political spectrum, between two men and two identities.

December 16, 2007 Antoine Wilson, author of The Interloper

SLOTS FOR THIS DATE ARE OPEN! EMAIL WRITERSREVEALED -AT- WRITERSREVEALED -DOT- COM FOR DETAILS.

All Owen Patterson wants is a normal life, a happy marriage, and a stable family. But following the brutal and random murder of his brother-in-law, that dream is shattered. A year later, his wife is still in mourning and his in-laws won’t talk about anything but their dead son.

The murderer, Henry Joseph Raven, has been put in prison, but as far as Owen is concerned, prison isn’t punishment enough. He embarks on a quest to “balance the scales of justice,” writing letters to Henry Raven under the pseudonym Lily Hazelton. His plan: to seduce the murderer, make him fall in love with his fictional correspondent, and then break his heart.

From one letter to the next, Lily Hazelton develops into a curious amalgam of details from Owen’s imagination, snatches of his difficult childhood, and memories of his cousin Eileen, a suicide who was his first true love. Not entirely in control of his own creation, Owen dives headfirst into the correspondence, only to find himself caught in the trap he’s set for Henry Raven.

Bringing together an epistolary game of cat and mouse with the harrowing record of one man’s psychological collapse, The Interloper is a compelling and original debut from a bold new writer.

About the Author: Antoine Wilson is the author of the novel The Interloper. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, StoryQuarterly, and Best New American Voices, among other publications, and he is a contributing editor of A Public Space. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and recipient of a Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin, he currently lives in Los Angeles. More info at antoinewilson.com.

Callie Miller interviews Antoine Wilson.

And click below to view the trailer for The Interloper.