I first met Erica Wright several years ago at the fabulous Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, when we were on a panel together talking about our debut novels. In the intervening years, we’ve both published several more books, and Erica happened to relocate to Washington, DC, becoming one of my favorite local authors to do joint events with. If you’re in DC, you can actually catch us tomorrow at Solid State Books! We’ll be talking about WOMAN 99 (me) and FAMOUS IN CEDARVILLE (Erica.) Check out the event info here.

Erica Wright's new crime novel FAMOUS IN CEDARVILLE received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. She is the author of three previous novels including THE RED CHAMELEON, which was one of O, The Oprah Magazine's Best Books of Summer 2014. Her poetry collections are INSTRUCTIONS FOR KILLING THE JACKAL and ALL THE BAYOU STORIES END WITH DROWNED. She's currently working on a book about snakes for Object Lessons. Her poems have appeared in Blackbird, Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, New Orleans Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She is the poetry editor and a senior editor at Guernica Magazine as well as a former editorial board member for Alice James Books. She has taught creative writing at Marymount Manhattan College and New York University's continuing studies program and currently runs a novel writing group through OneRoom. She grew up in Wartrace, TN and now lives in Washington, DC with her husband and their dog Penny.

Erica’s recommendation is THE TENTH MUSE by Catherine Chung, which has drawn raves from reviewers everywhere from Bustle to USA Today. Add Erica’s heartfelt praise to the chorus: “I enjoyed every sentence of this smart, moving story. Chung makes math seem both beautiful and thrilling.”