COLUMNS
Talk Show 24 with Leah Hager Cohen, Joshua Ferris, Alice Mattison, and Ann Packer
/ Jaime Clarke
04.30.09
TALK SHOW: First Apartment
Leah Hager Cohen was born in Manhattan in 1967. She has three children and has written seven books. Among the honors her books have received are New York Times Notable Book (four times); American Library Association Ten Best Books of the Year; Toronto Globe and Mail Ten Best Books of the Year; and Booksense 76 Pick. She is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review and currently teaches writing at Lesley University's M.F.A. program and at Boston University. Visit Leah at www.leahhagercohen.com.
Joshua Ferris is the author of Then We Came to the End, a National Book Award finalist and winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. Visit Joshua at www.thenwecametotheend.com.
Alice Mattison’s new novel, Nothing Is Quite Forgotten In Brooklyn, was published in September by Harper Perennial; an excerpt appeared a year ago in The New Yorker as a short story, “ Brooklyn Circle.” Her last book, In Case We’re Separated: Connected Stories, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2005 and won the Connecticut Book Award. Alice is the author of five novels—also including The Book Borrower, The Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman, and Hilda and Pearl—four collections of stories, and a book of poems. Her stories, essays, and poems have been in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Ploughshares, Best American Short Stories, the Pushcart Prize, and many other publications. She teaches fiction in the graduate writing program at Bennington College.
Ann Packer received the Great Lakes Book Award for The Dive from Clausen's Pier, which was a national bestseller. She is also the author of Mendocino and Other Stories. She is a past recipient of a James Michener award and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and other magazines, as well as in Prize Stories 1992: The O. Henry Awards. She lives in northern California with her family. Visit Ann at www.annpacker.com.
––Where was your first apartment?
Cohen: It was on Lake Street in New Haven, just past the edge of Yale’s campus.
Ferris: My mother's womb. A snug little efficiency, all utilities paid. No problem with heating or plumbing, though the landlord was a heavy smoker, to her eternal shame.
Mattison: The apartment was on Sacramento Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Three other women and I rented the second floor of a house that was behind another, larger house. Next to our building was the playground of an elementary school, though the school itself was across the street.
Packer: The first apartment that was mine alone was on West 10th Street in Manhattan––right in the heart of Greenwich Village, on the same block as the wonderful, quiet, literate bookstore Three Lives, where I stopped to browse 2-3 times per week; and the fabled gay bar the Ninth Circle, of which I was less aware, except at closing time (4 a.m.) when the party would spill raucously onto the street. Balducci's, the now much-mourned food emporium, was two blocks away, and I bought more than my share of pasta salads there, and expensive pears. This was in the early 80s, and the foodie movement didn't really have a name yet, but it was thriving on the corner of 6th Avenue and 9th Street. The other part of the immediate neighborhood that I remember vividly is the Greek coffee shop where I bought coffee every morning on my way to the subway. There'd be a line of 10-15 people at all times, but it moved quickly, and within minutes of arriving it would be my turn. "Regular coffee" was my order––this meant coffee with a specific but indefinable amount of half-and-half: more than there would be in "dark coffee" and less than in "light coffee." I'd never asked for coffee that way before, and never have since. I guess we add our own half-and-half these days, saying "Coffee with room for cream" or even just "Coffee with room," to keep the word count low and the line moving at Starbucks.
Leah Hager Cohen was born in Manhattan in 1967. She has three children and has written seven books. Among the honors her books have received are New York Times Notable Book (four times); American Library Association Ten Best Books of the Year; Toronto Globe and Mail Ten Best Books of the Year; and Booksense 76 Pick. She is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review and currently teaches writing at Lesley University's M.F.A. program and at Boston University. Visit Leah at www.leahhagercohen.com.
Joshua Ferris is the author of Then We Came to the End, a National Book Award finalist and winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. Visit Joshua at www.thenwecametotheend.com.
Alice Mattison’s new novel, Nothing Is Quite Forgotten In Brooklyn, was published in September by Harper Perennial; an excerpt appeared a year ago in The New Yorker as a short story, “ Brooklyn Circle.” Her last book, In Case We’re Separated: Connected Stories, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2005 and won the Connecticut Book Award. Alice is the author of five novels—also including The Book Borrower, The Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman, and Hilda and Pearl—four collections of stories, and a book of poems. Her stories, essays, and poems have been in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Ploughshares, Best American Short Stories, the Pushcart Prize, and many other publications. She teaches fiction in the graduate writing program at Bennington College.
Ann Packer received the Great Lakes Book Award for The Dive from Clausen's Pier, which was a national bestseller. She is also the author of Mendocino and Other Stories. She is a past recipient of a James Michener award and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and other magazines, as well as in Prize Stories 1992: The O. Henry Awards. She lives in northern California with her family. Visit Ann at www.annpacker.com.
––Where was your first apartment?
Cohen: It was on Lake Street in New Haven, just past the edge of Yale’s campus.
Ferris: My mother's womb. A snug little efficiency, all utilities paid. No problem with heating or plumbing, though the landlord was a heavy smoker, to her eternal shame.
Mattison: The apartment was on Sacramento Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Three other women and I rented the second floor of a house that was behind another, larger house. Next to our building was the playground of an elementary school, though the school itself was across the street.
Packer: The first apartment that was mine alone was on West 10th Street in Manhattan––right in the heart of Greenwich Village, on the same block as the wonderful, quiet, literate bookstore Three Lives, where I stopped to browse 2-3 times per week; and the fabled gay bar the Ninth Circle, of which I was less aware, except at closing time (4 a.m.) when the party would spill raucously onto the street. Balducci's, the now much-mourned food emporium, was two blocks away, and I bought more than my share of pasta salads there, and expensive pears. This was in the early 80s, and the foodie movement didn't really have a name yet, but it was thriving on the corner of 6th Avenue and 9th Street. The other part of the immediate neighborhood that I remember vividly is the Greek coffee shop where I bought coffee every morning on my way to the subway. There'd be a line of 10-15 people at all times, but it moved quickly, and within minutes of arriving it would be my turn. "Regular coffee" was my order––this meant coffee with a specific but indefinable amount of half-and-half: more than there would be in "dark coffee" and less than in "light coffee." I'd never asked for coffee that way before, and never have since. I guess we add our own half-and-half these days, saying "Coffee with room for cream" or even just "Coffee with room," to keep the word count low and the line moving at Starbucks.