Davis, Lisa Selin 1972–

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Davis, Lisa Selin 1972–

PERSONAL: Born 1972, in Saratoga Springs, NY. Education: Hampshire College, B.A.; Arizona State University, M.F.A.; attended City University of New York.

ADDRESSES: Home—Brooklyn, NY. Office—Pratt Institute, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, 200 Willoughby Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11205. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Novelist, freelance journalist, and instructor. Pratt Institute of Art, Brooklyn, NY, visiting professor of creative writing. KGB nonfiction reading series, co-director; Nickelodeon's Blue's Clues, former prop master.

WRITINGS:

Belly, Little, Brown (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to Women Behaving Badly: Feisty Flash Fiction Stories, edited by W. Wade Mukhherjee and S. Baker, Paper Journey Press (Wake Forest, NC), 2004. Contributor of articles to periodicals, including Life, Marie Claire, Metropolis, New York, New York Times, Preservation, and This Old House. Contributor of poems and fiction to Literary Review, Swink, and Hayden's Ferry Review, among others.

SIDELIGHTS: Lisa Selin Davis is a freelance journalist and instructor in creative writing. She portrays the trials and tribulations of an ex-convict returning to his hometown in her first novel, Belly. The title is derived from the protagonist, William "Belly" O'Leary, so named because of a belly flop he performed as a child. Now aged fifty-nine and recently released from prison, Belly returns to Saratoga Springs, New York (Davis's actual hometown) after serving four years for using his bar as an illegal betting establishment. Back home, he finds everything altered, but he returns to his old habits of drinking and abusing his family. Belly, unlike his town, has not changed at all. The one driving force in his life seems to be the hidden guilt he feels at the death of one of his daughters.

A critic for Kirkus Reviews praised the "abundant and highly capable detail of people and place" in Belly, but overall found the novel "psychologically tedious." Similarly, a reviewer for Publishers Weekly called the book a "well-written but psychologically stifling debut." However, Marie Hashima Lofton, reviewing the same work for BookLoons.com, found it a "wonderfully crafted tale of a man who refuses to change with the times." Speaking to a contributor to Emerging Writers Forum online, Davis noted: "I didn't set out to make [Belly] likeable. I was honestly curious about what it would be like to be in his situation. All I did, really, was put myself in his shoes. It was an exercise in empathy."