Read more
Equal parts memoir, mystery, reclaimed screenplay, and travelogue,
Reel Bay charts Jana Larson’s unusual journey toward understanding another woman's life.
About the author
Jana Larson holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing from Hamline University, where she studied with Barrie Jean Borrich (My Lesbian Husband), Patricia Weaver Francisco (Telling: A Memoir of Rape and Recovery), and Jim Moore; an MFA in Filmmaking from the University of California, San Diego; and a BA in Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. As a filmmaker, she has received awards from the Princess Grace Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Board and shown her work at festivals and the Walker Art Center. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Summary
Equal parts memoir, mystery, reclaimed screenplay, and travelogue, Reel Bay charts Jana Larson’s unusual journey toward understanding another woman's life.
Foreword
Galleys available in June
Targeted bookseller mailing
Blurbs sought from: Jia Tolentino, Kate Zambreno, Jazmina Barrera, Trisha Low
National print, radio, and online publicity campaign
Midwest bookstore readings
Pitching for Brooklyn Book Festival and AWP 2021
Advertising: Rain Taxi; pitching for Indies Introduce
Promotion on Coffee House Press social media channels and website
Additional text
“Larson softens the divisions separating genres by interweaving memoir, travelogue and screenplay. . . . a cleverly aberrant narrative structure dealing with the creative process and the difficult search for meaning.” —Andru Okun, Star Tribune
“The pleasure of reading this essay is in the search, and in Larson”s precise, clear-eyed prose. . . . an enthralling read that is ultimately about how to make art out of the raw fuel of experience.” —Kat Solomon, Chicago Review of Books
“A captivating blend of memoir, true-crime, meditation on women in film, and fantasy. . . . Larson captures both the fanaticism of creative fixation and the listlessness of artistic existential dread with clarity and empathy.” —Lucy Shapiro, Arkansas International
“A moving and powerful elegy about brave women who go in search of an unknown something. A story of obsessions, passions, and delusions. A splendidly melancholy book about the literature in filmmaking and the filmmaking in literature.” —Jazmina Barrera
“I have no idea what the hell this book is—in the best way—except that it’s obsessive and dazzling as it spawns and splits fictions and nonfictions. Expect to be dizzied. Reel Bay vibrates with strangeness.” —Ander Monson
“Reel Bay is an obsessive, fascinating, haunting debut; it is a kind of essay-film constructed out of gorgeous prose. Jana Larson reveals/revises the tensions between art and life, between fiction and fact, and between author and subject.” —Dana Spiotta
