Laskas, Jeanne Marie 1958-

views updated

LASKAS, Jeanne Marie 1958-

PERSONAL: Born 1958; married, husband's name Alex; children: one daughter. Education: University of Pittsburgh, M.F.A., 1985.

ADDRESSES: Home—Scenery Hill, PA. Office—University of Pittsburgh, English Department CL 526, 4200 5th Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15260. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Author, educator, and journalist. Life, New York, NY, contributing editor, 1989–92; Washington Post magazine, Washington, DC, syndicated columnist, 1994–. University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, assistant professor of English; Goucher College, Baltimore, MD, conference instructor and core faculty member in M.F.A. program.

AWARDS, HONORS: Golden Quill awards for excellence in journalism, and Excellence award, both Sunday Magazine Editors Association.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

The Balloon Lady and Other People I Know, Duquesne University Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 1996.

We Remember: Women Born at the Turn of the Century Tell the Stories of Their Lives in Words and Pictures, photographs by Lynn Johnson, Morrow (New York, NY), 1999.

Fifty Acres and a Poodle: A Story of Love, Livestock, and Finding Myself on a Farm, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 2000.

The Exact Same Moon: Fifty Acres and a Family, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 2003.

Author of Weekly column "Significant Others," in Washington Post magazine. Articles and essays have appeared in periodicals, including Gentleman's Quarterly, Mirabella, Travel and Leisure, Glamour, Redbook, Health, Miami Herald, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Cleveland Plain Dealer. Esquire, contributing editor. Writings have appeared in numerous anthologies, including Best American Sports Writing 2000, 2000.

SIDELIGHTS: Jeanne Marie Laskas is an accomplished educator, columnist, feature writer, and author of several nonfiction books, including two memoirs about fulfilling her dream of living on a farm. In Fifty Acres and a Poodle: A Story of Love, Livestock, and Finding Myself on a Farm, Laskas tells the story of her move to the country. She had been living in the Pittsburgh area when she purchased her dream property. Although her boyfriend, Alex, was a confirmed city dweller, he agreed to try the country life with her. In the book, Laskas recounts her first year on the farm, located in the rural Pennsylvania area known as Scenery Hill. Readers follow Laskas as she and Alex adjust to their new life, complete with farm animals and friendly neighbors. Calling the book a "spunky memoir" and "an amusing and emotional tale," a Publishers Weekly contributor noted that the author describes the experience "with heartfelt honesty, offering many fresh pleasures for any city dweller who has ever dreamed of buying a farm."

In the second volume of her memoir, The Exact Same Moon: Fifty Acres and a Family, Laskas and Alex have married, the author is exploring her new responsibilities and finds herself deliriously happy. When her mother becomes paralyzed by Guillain-Barre syndrome, Laskas comes face-to-face with her own mortality, and this starts her thinking that it's time to start a family. When she discovers she can never be a birth mother, she and Alex decide to adopt a baby. In a review in the Washington Post, Carolyn See commented: "the subtext here is what it's like to try to hold on to the mentality of a child while life is inexorably jamming you along the rude conveyor belt of time." See went on to write, "This could all be dismissed as girly-stuff, another form of chick-lit, but what the heck. Half of us are girls and chicks." A Publishers Weeklycontributor commented that Laskas "artfully chronicles her daily routine caring for the farm animals, meeting neighbors and visiting her mother," and "details her search for motherhood with evocative writing." A Kirkus Reviews contributor called the book "chattery yet appealing" and described the author as "an endearing, scrambled character, her swarming thoughts torturing readers as they torture her." In a review in Booklist, Maragaret Flanagan called the memoir a "delightful sequel" and a "humorous account of one woman's quest for emotional and spiritual fulfillment in contemporary rural America."