Tara Ison

Tara Ison is an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist.

Work and Honors

She is the author of three novels: Rockaway (Soft Skull Press, 2013), The List (Scribner, 2007), and A Child out of Alcatraz (Faber & Faber, 1997), which was a Finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Prize.^[1] A collection of essays, Reeling Through Life: How I Learned To Live, Love & Die at the Movies, was published by Soft Skull Press in January 2015. Her short story collection, Ball, is scheduled for publication by Soft Skull Press in Fall 2015.

Ison's short fiction, essays, poetry and book reviews have appeared in Tin House, The Kenyon Review, The Rumpus, Nerve, Black Clock, TriQuarterly, The Santa Monica Review, PMS: poemmemoirstory, Publishers Weekly, The Week, The Mississippi Review, LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, the San Jose Mercury News, and numerous anthologies. She is also the co-writer, with Neil Landau, of the 1991 cult classic movie Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead.^[2]

Ison is the recipient of a 2008 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship and a 2008 COLA Individual Artist Grant, as well as multiple Yaddo fellowships, a Rotary Foundation Scholarship for International Study, a Brandeis National Women's Committee Award, a Thurber House Fiction Writer-in-Residence Fellowship, the Simon Blattner Fellowship from Northwestern University, and a California Arts Council Artists' Fellowship Award.

Ison received her MFA in Fiction & Literature from Bennington College. She has taught creative writing and screenwriting at Washington University in St. Louis, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Goddard College, Antioch University Los Angeles, and UC Riverside Palm Desert's MFA in Creative Writing program. She is currently Associate Professor of Fiction at Arizona State University.^[3]

Books

Reeling Through Life: How I Learned to Live, Love, and Die at the Movies, essays

Critical acclaim for Reeling Through Life: How I Learned To Live, Love, and Die at the Movies, by Tara Ison

"I have thought of [moviegoing] as a fairly passive endeavor until Tara Ison's insightful essay collection, Reeling Through Life: How I Learned to Live, Love, and Die at the Movies, made me realize that the movies I loved had marked me, perhaps in ways I had not realized, and that I shared some of the sensibility she had so smartly articulated in this book." —Chicago Tribune Editor's Choice

“…an innovative blend of film criticism and literary memoir...these essays, combining cultural criticism with deeply personal reflections on love, religion, family, and the nature of art, offer brilliant analysis and food for thought for film aficionados and casual fans alike." — [[Publishers Weekly]]

“Tara Ison’s passion for the movies shines in every essay in Reeling Through Life, as she gleans life lessons from the movies she’s fallen in love with. By turns hilarious, poignant, and outrageous; always profound and beautifully written.” — Hallie Ephron, Night Night, Sleep tight^[4]

“Essential and completely identifiable reading for any film lover. Tara Ison writes about movies and life the way Stephen King can write about horror — with an encyclopedic knowledge of both.”— David Koepp, screenwriter, Jurassic Park, Spider-Man^[5]

“Tara Ison’s Reeling Through Life is unforgettable – a must-read for anyone who loves movies. In an exquisite blend of memoir, criticism, and cultural observation, this luminous collection engages readers’ hearts, minds, and intellect the way that only the best movies – and the best storytellers – can. Ison masterfully showcases how movies shape and guide us; how they move and empower and embolden us; how they help us learn how to be, above all, human.” — Emily Rapp, The Still Point of the Turning World^[6]

“Like a great film retrospective, Ison’s gorgeous essays flicker and dazzle with nostalgia; her shimmering prose and astute, provocative insights surprise and delight. But it’s in her courage to rack focus, turning her personal life inside-out, that she elevates this book into a profoundly moving, revelatory whole.” — Neil Landau, 101 Things I Learned in Film School^[7]

“In Reeling Through Life, Tara Ison fashions a marvelous alchemy, giving cinematic sweep to the challenges in her life — some of them recognizable and very funny, some of them not and damned hard — while finding instructive nuggets in an array of iconic films to help make sense of the daily stuff we’d like to leave, if only we could, on the cutting room floor. The result is a brave yet buoyant personal story, told with grace and wit and not a hint of self-pity.– Douglas Bauer, What Happens Next?: Matters of Life and Death, Winner of the 2014 PEN/New England Book Award for NonFiction^[8]

“Tara Ison’s Reeling Through Life is the most enjoyable, intelligent, sharp-eyed, and intensely personal account I’ve ever read of how movies help to make us who we are. It’s as stirring as Norma Rae’s union sign, as seductive as Mrs. Robinson’s leopard-skin coat.”— Matthew Goodman, Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World^[9]

A Child out of Alcatraz, a novel

A Child Out of Alcatraz (Faber & Faber, 1997), the fictional story of a family living on Alcatraz during the 1940s and 1950s, focusing on the experience of the wife and daughter of a prison guard, was a Finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for "Best First Fiction" in 1997. Ison has stated "I researched the story for four years before I wrote a single word" and called the novel a "feminist re-interpretation of the Alcatraz myth." ^[10]

Critical acclaim for A Child out of Alcatraz

"Searingly original, brutal, unique. Tara Ison is unquestionably an important new voice in American fiction." - Carolyn See^[11]

"A fascinating and wonderfully evocative first novel about life on Alcatraz, seen through the eyes of a little girl growing up on the Rock in the 1950s. A compelling story, richly evoking a time and place." - Kirkus Reviews^[11]

"Ison has a gift...the fearsome plight of Olivia, who narrates much of the novel, is never simplified. It's through her radiant consciousness that Ison's novel achieves a natural, basic morality." - Publishers Weekly^[11]

"Disturbing, dark, and original. A stunning first novel." - Feminist Bookstore News^[11]

"This is a sad, often beautiful novel...Ison renders the slow disintegration of a once-vital women, and its effect on her daughter, with perfect heartbreaking despair... A provocative story." - The Boston Book Review:^[11]

"What makes A Child out of Alcatraz particularly memorable is its unique venue...the author paints a searing portrait of an American family that might have been typical had fate and history not intervened." - Glamour^[11]

"A Child out of Alcatraz is an energetic, captivating novel...we are left wanting more of her because that voice - so rare and flawless - is a crystalline sound one doesn't want to end." - The Bloomsbury Review^[11]

The List, a novel

The List (Scribner, 1997) explores the dysfunctional relationship between a mismatched couple who cannot bear to end the relationship.

Critical acclaim for The List

"The List is visceral, honest, and intensely readable." - Aimee Bender^[12]

"The List" is both wise and wicked about love." - Meg Wolitzer^[12]

"The List is one fast-paced, word-drunk, film-obsessed, sidesplitting roller coaster; a screwball comedy, an anti-romance romance, the quintessential LA novel. Ison is some kind of genius." - Brad Kessler^[12]

"An anti-romance, a tale of intoxicating love that turns toxic... Readers who like their sunniness with a side of bitter will appreciate Ison's portrayal of love's power to bring out the worst in us." - The Chicago Tribune^[12]

"Psycho-comic." - Vanity Fair^[12]

"Anyone who has ever done something seemingly out of character, irrational, or sacrificial because of love will immediately recognize and appreciate the complexity of The List... With her sharp wit, honesty about love, humor about dysfunction, and her gift for unforgettable characters, Tara Ison spins an addictive novel that leaves the Al or Isabel in us wanting more." - The Midwest Book Review^[12]

Rockaway, a novel

Rockaway: the story of a young artist who exiles herself for an emotionally turbulent summer in Rockaway Beach, New York, was published by Soft Skull Press in 2013. In Summer of 2013, it was chosen for inclusion in the list of the five Best Books of Summer by Oprah Winfrey's O Magazine.^[13]

Critical acclaim for Rockaway

“Tara Ison is one of the premiere stylists of her generation, and on every page of Rockaway she writes sentences that are elegant and rich. It's no exaggeration to say Rockaway is pretty much perfect — a meditation on art, aloneness, ambition, love, religion, and the unknowable and unquenchable thirst that is human desire. Just start reading. You won't stop.” —Charles Bock ^[14]

"Tara Ison's novel ROCKAWAY is an illuminating inquiry into the nature of love, the meaning of art, the power of faith and family, and how grace is discovered in the most unexpected places - a stunning, modern echo of Virginia Woolf's TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, with a uniquely brilliant voice." - Emily Rapp^[14]

"Here is a young woman at the end of her leash, the end of her youth, the edge of her art, not doing a melancholy artist-on-the-beach thing, but confronting the many true colors of her life in this beautiful and dangerous season. Tara Ison's Rockaway is a stirring, fresh look at a tough passage.” —Ron Carlson ^[14]

“Written in language that is utterly liquid, Rockaway inhabits the poetry of a woman fiercely searching for identity. Here, we find an illuminating meditation on the art of being, with the true revelation suggesting that perhaps we were never lost at all. A triumphant reclamation of the soul.” —Ilie Ruby^[14]

“Rockaway is a novel that embraces everything: love, art, friendship, faith, and the mystery of why we create the lives we do, with prose that is breathtaking, clear, and elegant. Sarah and Marty and Emily are depicted with honesty that is utterly riveting. This is a beautiful gem of a book." —Karen E. Bender^[14]

References

External links

• Official website