Attenberg, Jami

PERSONAL:

Education: Graduated from Johns Hopkins University.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Brooklyn, NY. E-mail—[email protected]; [email protected].

CAREER:

Worked variously as a hostess, bartender, waitress, and in a nursing home; worked in advertising, beginning 1998; Home Box Office (HBO), senior web producer for the series The Sopranos and Six Feet Under.

WRITINGS:

Deli Life (chapbook), So New Media (Austin, TX), 2003.

Instant Love: Fiction (stories), Shaye Areheart Books (New York, NY), 2006.

The Kept Man (novel), Riverhead (New York, NY), 2007.

Author of a blog; contributor of articles to periodicals, including the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon.com, Print, Nylon, Plenty, Radar, and eWeek; contributor of stories to periodicals, including Pindeldyboz, Nerve, Bullfight Review, Jane, and Spork.

SIDELIGHTS:

Jami Attenberg is a writer who has also enjoyed a career in marketing and online content production for television shows. In an interview with Barb Klansnic for Write and Publish Your Book online, she offered her ideas about the marketing of writing, and particularly women's writing, saying: "I'm not in love with the way they market women. Too many books are put in that chick lit box and needn't be, for starters. I think we need some more creative thinking in that area. I hope they get a better understanding of the internet. There's so much power to be harnessed there, and right now they're largely wasting it. It would be interesting if the higher ups were all forced to have a blog for a few months."

She added in the interview: "It might be helpful if publishers developed a basic marketing class for their authors. I learned everything I know from reading the websites of other authors and talking to people who had already been through the process. But what if publishers already had a set list of suggestions for their authors? Things they could do cheaply and easily."

Attenberg has contributed articles about writing, the media, technology, and sex to various publications, and short stories to others. Her first book is a collection of stories, some previously published, titled Instant Love: Fiction. The teens growing into women whose stories are told include Holly, her sister Maggie, and Sarah Lee. "Attenberg flows easily from life to life and character to character, setting up each story so that the reader is quickly placed within the chronology of each woman's life," wrote Cara Seitchek for the Small Spiral Notebook Web site. "A strong fiction debut, Instant Love is an easy read with substance and style."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Publishers Weekly, April 3, 2006, review of Instant Love: Fiction, p. 36.

School Library Journal, September, 2006, Brigeen Radoicich, review of Instant Love, p. 246.

ONLINE

ASAP,http://asap.ap.org/ (July 3, 2006), Kevin Sampsell, "Hickeys, Hope and Hard Work" (interview).

Jami Attenberg Home Page,http://www.jamiattenberg.com (May 5, 2007).

Jive,http://www.jivemagazine.com/ (May 5, 2007), Taryn Hubbard, review of Instant Love.

Small Spiral Notebook,http://www.smallspiralnotebook.com/ (May 5, 2007), Cara Seitchek, review of Instant Love and "Cara Seitchek Interviews Jami Attenberg, Author of Instant Love."

Tripwire,http://www.thetripwire.com/ (July 13, 2006), Brian Bergstrom, review of Instant Love.

Write and Publish Your Book,http://www.writeandpublishyourbook.com/ (May 5, 2007), Barb Klansnic, "Jami Attenberg Gives the Lowdown on Book Marketing" (interview).