Sheila Kohler and Perrin Ireland, Becoming Jane Eyre and New Non-fiction

Start: 04/20/2010 7:00 pm

"Sheila Kohler moves with assured ease between fiction and biography, between the inner life of Charlotte Brontë as she composes Jane Eyre and the comedy of professional rivalry among the three Brontë sisters."

J.M. Coetzee, author of Disgrace and Summertime

"Ireland treats her characters with tenderness, portraying how they experience the world, and ultimately holding out a note of hope. She wrings meaning from the slightest of gestures . . . Sarah wins our sympathy, as an everywoman seeking, against the odds, a place of safety and comfort."

The Boston Globe

Becoming Jane Eyre is Sheila Kohler's tenth book. Others include Bluebird or The Invention of Happiness, A Perfect Place, and The Children of Pithiviers. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, O Magazine and included in the Best American Short Stories. She has twice won an O’Henry Prize, as well as an Open Fiction Award, a Willa Cather Prize, and a Smart Family Foundation Prize. Her novel Cracks was nominated for an Impac Award, and has been made into a feature film to be distributed by IFC. She has been published in 8 countries.

Perrin Ireland is the author of the novels Chatter, and Ana Imagined. Her work has been published in AGNI magazine, The Boston Globe, Post Road magazine, and Fanzine. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.