The Burning House

Paul Lisicky is well-known and well-connected in the literary and academic worlds. (Husband is Mark Doty.) Extensive reading tour planned, with 30-40 stops at bookstores, book festivals, writers' conferences, and universities. (Author did more than 20 readings on his own in 2010, with no new book since 2006.) Author is an active social networker, with over 4000 Facebook friends and Twitter followers, as well as a popular blog and web site. Burning House already has stellar blurbs, from Jayne Anne Philips, Nick Flynn, Robert Olen Butler Media and booksellers will be invited to book parties in New York, the Hamptons, and Provincetown Author has two previous books (novel and memoir) published with Graywolf, that were well reviewed and widely publicized. Subject matter of Burning House has widest appeal of any of the author's works: a family saga comparable to Michael Cunningham's Flesh and Blood Timely non-fiction hook: A close-knit family and community torn apart by battles over community development and gentrification, in a recession-plagued exurban environment seldom depicted in fiction. Both witty and profound, the narrative presents a dynamic interior monologue: One man struggles to do right as his family and community begin to come apart.