Name Alix Strauss Role Author | Education New York University | |
Books The joy of funerals, Based Upon Availabilit, Britney Spears: An Unauthori, No Authority, Death Becomes Them | ||
Based upon availability by alix strauss
Alix Strauss is a four-time published author and media social satirist based in Manhattan. She has been a featured trend journalist on CBS, CNN, ABC, NBC's today show and various national morning and talk shows. Her articles have appeared in The New York Post, Time Magazine, The New York Times, Marie Claire, Entertainment Weekly, Self, and many other publications. Her four published books include her two non-fiction works Have I Got A Guy For You and Death Becomes Them: Unearthing the Suicides of the Brilliant, the Famous, and the Notorious, and her two works of fiction The Joy of Funerals and Based Upon Availability. She was chosen as a speaker for both the Jewish Book Council and Israel Bonds. Strauss also spoke last year at the University of Connecticut's suicide prevention week in conjunction with Death Becomes Them.
Contents
- Based upon availability by alix strauss
- In conversation meredith maran and alix strauss 2 4
- Biography
- Writing career
- Awards Honors
- References
Strauss lectures extensively not only for bookstores and book clubs, but at conferences, colleges and universities, synagogues, libraries, country clubs, etc. For her most recently published novel Based Upon Availability, a novel that takes place in Manhattan's swanky Four Seasons Hotel, Strauss designed a book tour around hotels. She is in fact known for her unusual reading events and was quoted by Publishers Weekly to say "I believe in finding venues that are in keeping with the theme of one's work." True to her words, Strauss held the launch party for her first novel The Joy of Funerals at the Frank E. Campbell funeral home. She also held a reading for Death Becomes Them: Unearthing the Suicides of the Brilliant, the Famous & the Notorious at the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
In conversation meredith maran and alix strauss 2 4
Biography
Alix Strauss currently lives and works in Manhattan and is a well-known freelance journalist. She graduated from New York University with a degree in Educational Theater and for the past 15 years has taught Creative Writing, Fiction Writing, Writing for Magazines, and Personal Essay writing.
Writing career
Strauss' widely published articles include everything from celebrity interviews, beauty, and travel to food, fashion, trends, etc., many of which can be viewed on her official website at www.alixstrauss.com. She has interviewed Viggo Mortensen, Kristin Chenoweth, Carrie Fisher, and many others. She is known for her unusual and edgy articles including, for example, one she wrote after having a consultation with sexologist Betty Dodson, Ph.D. for some masturbation tips.
The Joy of Funerals was published in 2003 by St. Martin's Griffin. It has been described as "a novel in stories" tied together by the narrative that follows the life of Nina, a single woman in her thirties who attends the funerals of the previous tales' deceased characters, hoping to find some human connection. The various stories feature a variety for characters including a widow in "Recovering Larry" who looks for male companionship at the funerals she attends to the woman in "Swimming Without Annette" who has a troublesome obsession with her lover's killer. It has been described as Sex and the City meets Six Feet Under and contains elements of dark comedy, sex, and tragedy.
Have I Got A Guy For You: What Really Happens When Mom Fixes You Up (Polka Dot Press, 2008) is an anthology of 26 true stories, edited by Alix Strauss, about mothers who have fixed up their daughters on horrifically bad blind dates. These true stories are personal narratives from today's top contemporary female writers. Examples of these failed dates include a mother who wrote to Michael Gelman, the producer of Live with Regis and Kelly hoping to fix him up with her daughter, a woman whose blind date serenaded her, dressed head to toe in leather in the middle of a Starbucks, a writer who spent her blind date - all eight hours of it - at a Dungeons & Dragons convention complete with costumes, and many others.
In 2009 HarperCollins Publishers printed Alix's third book Death Becomes Them: Unearthing the Suicides of the Brilliant, the Famous, and the Notorious, a non-fiction work about famous suicides.
Alix Strauss' most-recently published novel Based Upon Availability (HarperCollins Publishers) came out in June 2010. In similar fashion to The Joy of Funerals, the book follows the lives of several different women tied together by one central narrator, Morgan, a hotel manager - an emotionally battered character, haunted by her dead sister's memory, desperately seeking human connection. The book's jacket cover describes the hotel as "offering sanctuary to some, solace to others, the hotel captures their darkest moments as they grapple with family, sex, power, love, and death."
Alixʼs essays have been anthologized in Sex, Drugs & Gefilte Fish... The Heeb Storytelling Collection and her short fiction has been featured in the Primavera Literary Journal, Hampton Shorts Literary Journal, The Idaho Review;, Quality Women's Fiction, The Blue Moon Café III, and A Kudzu Christmas.
The Joy of funerals has been optioned for film. Strauss will write the screenplay and Stockard Channing is expected to direct the film adaptation. Death Becomes Them has been optioned for a television show by a well-known producer.