Bialosky, Jill

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BIALOSKY, Jill

PERSONAL: Born in Cleveland, OH; children: one son. Education: Graduate of Ohio University; Johns Hopkins University, M.A. (writing); University of Iowa, M.F.A.

ADDRESSES: Home—New York, NY. Offıce—W. W. Norton and Company, 500 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10110.

CAREER: Writer, editor, and poet. W. W. Norton & Company, New York, NY, vice president, fiction editor, and editorial director of poetry series.

WRITINGS:

The End of Desire (poems), Knopf (New York, NY), 1997.

(Coeditor with Helen Schulman) Wanting a Child (essays), Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 1998.

Subterranean (poems), Knopf (New York, NY), 2001.

House under Snow (novel), Harcourt (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor to periodicals, including American Poetry Review, New Yorker, Partisan Review, Redbook, Triquarterly, and Paris Review.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A novel inspired by Anton Chekhov's play The Three Sisters.

SIDELIGHTS: Jill Bialosky is a writer, editor, and poet. Her first volume, The End of Desire, is a collection of poems divided into three parts. In the first, titled "House," Bialosky chronicles the lives of four young women who lose their father before they reach adulthood. The children in the poems attempt to compensate for the absence of the paternal parent as shown in the first long poem, "Fathers in the Snow." The other sections are titled "Reckless Heart" and "Winter." Sue Russell wrote in Women's Review of Books that "the arranged beauty of art and the raw spontaneity of human emotion is particularly apparent in the poems that focus on family of origin."

A Publishers Weekly reviewer said that Bialosky "demonstrates a clear and discerning eye, establishes fine rhythms, and fashions smart line breaks." Phoebe Pettingell wrote in New Leader that "these brief, eloquent poems rise above mere complaint to sing like a melody in a plaintive mode. The music is sad, but the tune gives pleasure because in it we can identify our own sorrows shaped into notes that touch and wring the heart." Nation writer Carol Muske felt that The End of Desire is "remarkably grounded and all of a piece. It reads like a single long poem that unscrolls, trancelike, as if a hypnotized or dreaming narrator rewitnesses the past in the present, bringing each detail whole and intact out of time."

Bialosky coedited Wanting a Child with Helen Schulman. The collection of twenty-two essays by noted authors, called a "moving anthology" by New York Times Book Review writer Leslie Chess Feller, focuses on the need to parent and the barriers that slow or prevent the process. Karen Propp wrote in Women's Review of Books that "the writers articulate their experiences across a wide and unusual range of family-building situations: miscarriages, Down's syndrome, lesbian parenting, single parenting, surrogate mothers, birth mothers, adoptive mothers, stepchild, sick child. Emotion runs high, prose runs fast and tight. Years of pain, loss, and hard-won joy are compressed into each relatively brief selection." Editor Schulman carried a baby to term after several miscarriages, and Bialosky, who suffered congenital uterine damage because her mother had been prescribed the hormone diethylstilbestrol (DES) in the 1950s, eventually adopted. A writer for Publishers Weekly called Wanting a Child a "hauntingly written and heartfelt collection." Library Journal's Barbara Hoffert said that the book "adds a truly human dimension to the discussion."

A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote that the poems of Subterranean, Bialosky's second collection, "which alternate between long blank verse and skeins of short, dimeter tercets, follow a tried-and-true formula: a parade of natural phenomena—weather, sun and moon, physical desire." Library Journal reviewer Louis Mc-Kee hailed the book's integrity of tone and "varied and original aesthetic," adding that "these poems touch on fragile moments and dark corners."

Bialosky's debut novel House under Snow "bears many traces of a poet's imagery and concentration," according to a reviewer for Publishers Weekly. The story is set in suburban Cleveland in the 1960s and 1970s, where Lilly Crane loses her husband and then concentrates on attracting a new one, often leaving her children alone as she recklessly pursues one man after another. After a succession of boyfriends, she does marry again, disastrously. The story is narrated by Anna, the middle of her three daughters, who is about to be married to the wrong man for the wrong reasons. A Kirkus Reviews contributor called the story a "soap opera, but a pretty good one, with a feel for the era . . . and a nicely satisfying end." The Publishers Weekly writer concluded by saying that "the ultimate effect of the book is to evoke a powerful sense of life's infinite mysteries, flourishing amid its squalors and terrors."

"Stunning" was Yvette W. Olson's description of House under Snow in a Library Journal review. Olson called the characters "original and clearly defined," praised the plotting and story, and described the writing as "poetic and lyrical." Booklist's Elsa Gaztambide said the novel "aches with the sensitivity of a soulful girl who is discovering love, sexuality, and the pain of unsurpassable betrayal."

When asked by interviewer Robert Birnbaum about the autobiographical content in her work, Bialosky replied: "I always think literature is much more interesting than real life. If you were documenting the day to day—I mean what do we do on a daily basis? We have coffee. We meet our friends. We get dressed in the morning. I turn to books because I want to escape daily life."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Booklist, April 15, 1998, Kathryn Carpenter, review of Wanting a Child, p. 1402; June 1, 2002, Elsa Gaztambide, review of House under Snow.

Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2002, review of House underSnow, p. 590.

Library Journal, June 1, 1998, Barbara Hoffert, review of Wanting a Child, p. 138; December, 2001, Louis McKee, review of Subterranean, p. 130; June 15, 2002, Yvette W. Olson, review of House under Snow, p. 92.

Nation, July 21, 1997, Carol Muske, review of TheEnd of Desire, p. 36.

New Leader, February 24, 1997, Phoebe Pettingell, review of The End of Desire, p. 14.

New York Times Book Review, May 10, 1998, Leslie Chess Feller, review of Wanting a Child; August 25, 2002, Michael Porter, review of House under Snow.

Publishers Weekly, January 27, 1997, review of TheEnd of Desire, p. 94; February 23, 1998, review of Wanting a Child, p. 57; December 17, 2001, review of Subterranean, p. 85; May 20, 2002, review of House under Snow, p. 45.

Women's Review of Books, September, 1998, Karen Propp, review of Wanting a Child, pp. 10-11; November, 1998, Sue Russell, review of The End of Desire, pp. 26-27.