Nina Siegal

A fun photo shoot: This month, Esta magazine in Holland is running a five-page spread featuring new women authors who write in a noir style. We all had to “become” our characters for a day, choose a scene from the novel, and play the role of our protagonist. It was fun to get made up as Valerie Vane, and the results were surprisingly Marilyn-esque. You won’t recognize me (except, maybe in the tiny thumb-nail image of my “before” shot on the last page), but it’s fun to look at anyway. Unfortunately, you can’t find the images online, but you can find Esta magazine in any Dutch news shop.

Strangely, I ran across an essay I wrote for my MFA final paper at Iowa, posted on the Internet by someone who claims to be Nina Siegal, but who is not me. It was nice to see it there — frankly, I’d forgotten all about it — and in some ways it expresses my philosophy about writing, especially my thoughts about the importance of reviving so-called “genre” fiction as part of the literary canon. It’s actually pretty relevant to my first novel and my motivation for writing it as I did.
The essay can be found here on BLOGSPOT. Take a look. I’d be interested to hear your comments on the subject, if you’re interested in adding your thoughts.

cheers,

Nina

Hey, what are you going to do — it’s a different language. Stuff falls through the cracks.

The Dutch version of my novel, which strangely has an English title — but not my title — is about to be published in Holland. They’re calling it Up & Down, which makes no sense to me, and it’s being classified as “chick noir,” apparently a new genre of literary fiction. HarperCollins, my US publisher, has the foreign rights to the book and sold the Dutch rights without retaining any control over title (supposedly this is typical in the business) so my vigorous protests went unheeded.

In any case, the publishing house, Truth & Dare, has done great publicity for the book so far, and I think the chick noir thing is kind of fun, though I’d probably prefer something like “dame noir” or “broad noir,” since I’ve never thought calling women “chicks” was very flattering or progressive.

The daily Dutch newspaper, De Pers (The Press) ran an interview with me on Tuesday. The very friendly reporter did a nice job with the piece, though he called my book “chick lit” — the fault of the publicity materials, no doubt — and he also said my favorite teacher was John Irving, though John Irving was never my teacher. I did mention, however that Irving had come to give a special seminar and workshop at Iowa, which was very inspiring. To be fair, the reporter gave me a chance to fix the errors, but I wasn’t able to check the Dutch translation in time. The main gist of the story is that I like to get feedback from other writers while I’m working on a book, which was certainly true for my first novel. I haven’t shown my new book to too many people, but I am looking to organize a writing group in Amsterdam for the support and feedback. The headline for the piece, Ik Heb Enthousiaste Meeleezers, means essentially, “I need to have enthusiastic readers.”

The bloggers are reporting back on A LITTLE TROUBLE WITH THE FACTS. Here are some reviews we’ve found online:

Nanners and Noodles notes, “I may have stumbled upon a gem of a book with A Little Trouble With The Facts by Nina Siegal.” She goes on to quote from the Publishers’ Weekly review. When last we checked, she was 60 pages in and “loving every bit of it.”

Bohemian Flophouse says, “What’s best about Nina Siegal’s art world novel is the dialogue – modern Valerie Vane talks sharp and slick like women in classic noir mystery books – think Lauren Bacall in those Bogey films.” Bohemian Flophouse just doesn’t like the cover of the book.

Ms. Frizzle is “thinking of reading 5-6 books that sold well, are on the smarter end of the spectrum writing-wise, and that are set in different worlds (ie, I don’t want to read only about women who work in fashion),” so she’s reading A LITTLE TROUBLE and finds it “hilarious” so far. She’s looking for other titles, too.

FuseAction, who heard the reading at KGB in New York, says on his MySpace page, “Siegal has put her newspaper experience to good use in what sounds like a delightful romp of a murder mystery.”

Tulipgirl says she read LITTLE TROUBLE from cover to cover in a single day.

Amy Belk, my best buddy, had really sweet things to say about the experience of coming to Amsterdam for my book launch: “I recommend the experience of standing in line for the autograph of someone you know and love. I think maybe we should do that for each other more often. Blush a little, hold out your newly purchased copy: um, please make it out to your friend, your fan…” Amy’s got a gorgeous Flickr page. I dare anyone to look at it and not fall in love with Amy.

My friend Corbin Collins blogged the Amsterdam book launch event at the American Book Center. See his contribution on Earth Goat.

Amsterdam’s American Book Center is celebrating the fact that AMSTERDAM has been named 2008 World Book Capital.

To inaugurate the year of book-related events, on April 23, authors will read all over the city of Amsterdam from 7.00 in the morning till 19.00 to celebrate World Book Day and the opening AWBC year. I’m going to be reading in the afternoon at 15.00, on the second floor of the American Book Center, and I’m going to be followed by the wonderful Julie Phillips, whose first book was the winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2007, and she will be followed by Pete Jordan, author of the funny memoir, Dishwasher, and a frequent guest on Late Night With David Letterman. So, come join us to celebrate the fact that we live in a literary city! Who-hoo! Hope to see you there.

To recap, here’s the schedule:

April 23, 2008

American Book Center, Amsterdam, right in the Spui
15-15.30 Nina Siegal
15.30-16 Julie Philips
16-16.30 Pete Jordan

My brother took this photo of the fiction section at Borders in New York. The two weeks of readings is up and I have to say I’m glad, at least I don’t have to overcome stage-fright on a daily basis for a while, which is nice. Back to my private scribblings. How can I thank everyone for coming out for the readings — especially all the wonderful old friends I haven’t seen in so long? All I can say is I’m amazingly grateful to feel lots of support and love.

I’m so pleased to announce that Lucinda Rosenfeld, author of WHAT SHE SAW… and WHY SHE WENT HOME… will be joining me for my last NYC reading on Wednesday night, March 19, in Manhattan. Please see the info below. Lucinda’s working on a third novel, and she’s going to be giving us a little taste…

JOIN US!

Nina Siegal and Lucinda Rosenfeld
Hosted by Emilie Stewart

Wednesday, March 19, 8:00 p.m.
Three of Cups, New York
83 First Avenue, at 5th Street
In the downstairs space
http://www.threeofcupsnyc.com/

My wonderful aunt and uncle, Marian and Jack Krauskopf, hosted a really lovely book event for me on the Upper West Side last night, inviting all the members of Marian’s book group and a lot of other friends and associates, to hear me read from A LITTLE TROUBLE… It was a beautiful party. Here I’m signing books.

I was thrilled to read from A LITTLE TROUBLE WITH THE FACTS at KGB last night, an amazingly gezellig venue in Manhattan’s East Village. I’ve been going there for years to attend readings of famous writers and a few friends, but I never heard the story about why it was called KGB. Last night, I met the owner, Denis. I asked him about the genesis of the name and he said he’d wanted to give it some kind of name to honor the fact that it was once the city’s Ukrainian Club. Downstairs, there was a gallery named Kraine’s Gallery, and so it came to be called Kraine’s Gallery Bar… Thus, KGB.

It’s been a fun week of the brief NYC tour so far. I started off in a small homegrown bookstore in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, called WORD. And here’s me signing my first American books.