Overview

HIGHLY ACCLAIMED, MEDIA-SAVVY BACKGROUND: In addition to having served on the board of the National Book Critics Circle; teaching at numerous prestigious writing workshops like the Paris Writers Workshop, the Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg, Russia; and Sarah Lawrence, among others; and earning a number of highly acclaimed grants from institutions such as MacDowell and the New York Foundation for the Arts; Laurie Stone has deep connections to the Village Voice, The Nation and NPR's Fresh Air. WELL-CONNECTED AUTHOR: Stone's most recent book, Everything Is Personal: Notes on Now, was praised and reviewed by the likes of Meg Wolitzner, Daisy Alioto, Mikhail Iossel, and Emily Nussbaum, among others, and her book before that, My Life as an Animal received positive attention from Margo Jefferson, Chris Kraus, and Joan Silber. A TIMELY TOPIC: As the world gradually picks itself up from the wreckage of 2020 and much of 2021, Stone's breezy but poignant observations and analysis come as a much-needed breath of understanding and contextualization for those of us still reeling and processing. A UNIQUE VOICE IN A POPULAR SUBGENRE: Laurie Stone's writing is reminiscent of acclaimed writers Maggie Nelson, Olivia Laing, and Rebecca Solnit, while also maintaining a sharply interesting voice and playing with form that allows even the most distracted of us to appreciate her work.

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9781948340526

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Stone's writing is perfect for this state, in which thinking is, on the one hand, self-referential and labored, and on the other hand, a lifeline. A former art critic for the Village Voice, she writes as though she were taking closeups: of her garden, her sister as she died, her thoughts about the world. There is little descriptive context, and the reader gets to be immersed in Stone's remarkable mind....It also describes our current predicament--everything that is not personal has vanished--and suggests a way of thinking sharply, imaginatively, beautifully, from right here. --MASHA GESSEN, The New Yorker Laurie Stone's Everything Is Personal is a galvanic account of our era, a trumpet blare aimed at sleepwalkers. In essays and diary entries that are sharply observant, grieving and generous, Stone seeks links between 1968 and now, meditating with wit and complexity on her own intimate and intellectual history, the question of separating the artist from the art, sexual violence, romantic love, friendship, comedy, television and more. She meditates on the life of Valerie Solanas and the trial of Brett Kavanaugh; she wrestles with her frustration with the good-girl-ism embedded in modern feminism and celebrates the messy, unquenchable power of desire. A voice unlike any other, she's a fearless thinker in an age submerged in fear. --EMILY NUSSBAUM, The New Yorker Upsetting the balance of the universe is a job description I would have liked, remarks the narrator in one of Stone's stories. The same can be said of Stone, with her acute and kinetic prose. Heartbreak, comedy, exuberance and nuance: they're all here and they're pure pleasure. --MARGO JEFFERSON, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Negroland An extraordinary work, remarkably and unflinchingly true to its author's powerful, instantly recognizable voice--full of wisdom and passion and fierce intelligence. Not a single word here is lost to indifference or indirectness. For Laurie Stone, the world we live in now is personal--everything and everywhere in it is her and the immediate place of her being. There is great beauty in this brave book, right at the very heart of it. --MIKHAIL IOSSEL, author of Notes from Cyberground: Trumpland and My Old Soviet Feeling Everything is Personal belongs on the shelf with Debord's Society of the Spectacle and Adorno's Minima Morialia, books that deliver great wisdom in rolling waves of epigrams. Stone knows that in a world crowded with opinions, a thought can't just be good, it has to be elegant. Her powerful sentences smile at their own precision, they don't just make a social point but offer a model on how to think, how to think in this time. --MICHAEL TOLKIN, author of The Player To read Laurie Stone's Everything is Personal: Notes on Now is to read Laurie Stone, is to experience a present tense intimacy with a lusty, testy, ebullient, scintillating mind, a woman's mind, a woman who remembers the summer of '68 and is living, right now, in this instant, through the Trump years, indeed is surviving the Trump years through documenting her perceptions and memories, her fierce judgments and sweeping opinions about everything from the Brontes to butter, Norman Mailer to Louis CK, Junot Diaz to bird shit, #MeToo to The Handmaid's Tale, piranhas to praying mantises, The Village Voice to Andy Warhol's shooter and author of SCUM Manifesto, Valerie Solanas, crystalizing, meanwhile, nuances of feeling--sanctimony, remorse, grief, desire desire desire, and then to keep us sane, to keep herself sane. Read Laurie Stone. Read this book. --DIANE SEUSS, author of Four-Legged Girl Her thinking and feeling are smack dab in the middle of things, tuning into almost everything in our world, especially time. I've never considered the phrase 'patient urgency' until I read this book, and I'll definitely be moving forward in my life with this framework for criticism and living. --STEVEN DUNN, author of POTTED MEAT Free and freeing, clear and bright, a cyclone of history written by an acutely observing eye, Everything is Personal makes radical social change and individual transformation seem not only necessary but inviting and funny. Laurie Stone has given us 'a place to live while the world learns to breathe again. --JOSEPH KECKLER, comic performer, opera singer, and author of Dragon at the Edge of a Flat World There are many excellent essays here, but the one I'm most excited by is 'The Clock', which is admirably complicit, resistant to all manner of received wisdom, self-questioning, ferocious, and little short of revelatory. I am a besotted fan. --DAVID SHIELDS, author of Reality Hunger Laurie Stone's exhilarating, unclassifiable book brings the stinging wit and ferocious political engagement of the feuilleton tradition of Joseph Roth into the age of the Social Media thread, with its built-in fluidity and openendedness, to brilliant effect. I can't remember when I last read anything as alive, alert, self-questioning and independent-minded as Everything is Personal. --JAMES LASDUN, author of The Fall Guy

[S]hows Stone's gifts as a critic....Fans of creative nonfiction will find Stone an animated guide to these disjointed times. -PUBLISHERS WEEKLY [B]ooks like Streaming Now are essential to continue cultivating our consideration for ourselves and others...Stone gives herself and us readers space to think, complain, scorn, wonder, celebrate, and mourn. And that is exactly what we all need as we continue to recover, learn, and change. -GABBI CISNEROS, Porchlight Books Laurie Stone's strange and otherworldly postcards are captivating, erudite, and moving. What is particularly startling is when you realize that the strange place she is writing from is the heart. We should all make such a trip and, thankfully, now we have this beautiful book as a guide. -IRIS SMYLES, author of Dating Tips for the Umemployed Laurie Stone is the best writer I have encountered in quite a while. Her writing grabs me and in a sentence or two, I am in the middle of it. -JOHN LURIE, musician, painter, actor, director, and producer Somewhere along the way one recognizes that a simple seeming collection of pensees is really the coherent exploration of a distinct and valuable cultural point of view, one that we might have lost contact with, and that we are lucky to still have. -VINCE PASSARO, author of Violence, Nudity, Adult Content A witty, brutally honest meditation on how we live now, and most importantly, on the life worth living. Nothing is too small or too large for Laurie Stone's laser vision-her willingness to say the things we're not supposed to say or admit to doing the things we're not supposed to do-all of which will keep you reading this book in one mad dash. -GLORIA JACOBS, editor and activist To my mind, Laurie Stone is a virtuousoi writer, and the streaming form-a kind of diary derived in part from blogs she has written on this site, particularly suits her genius. Her writing is full of attitude and has a defiant vibe I find completely compelling. Yes, she wants to entertain us-she is engaged in comedy-but its comedy of a most serious kind, like all real comedy. It's not schtick. Laurie means every word and the words ring true. Read this book! -ALEC MARSH, professor and author of Ezra Pound

"[S]hows Stone’s gifts as a critic....Fans of creative nonfiction will find Stone an animated guide to these disjointed times. —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY [B]ooks like Streaming Now are essential to continue cultivating our consideration for ourselves and others...Stone gives herself and us readers space to think, complain, scorn, wonder, celebrate, and mourn. And that is exactly what we all need as we continue to recover, learn, and change. —GABBI CISNEROS, Porchlight Books Each section of Streaming Now often tops or at least equals the previous one...If this tale had been written as fiction, it would be making one of those annual collections of best short stories. —BRANDON JUDELL, Medium Even the shortest paragraphs in this book embody Stone’s literary vitality and her palpable resistance to the weight of the pandemic. —STEPHANIE GEMMELL, Inklette Laurie Stone's strange and otherworldly postcards are captivating, erudite, and moving. What is particularly startling is when you realize that the strange place she is writing from is the heart. We should all make such a trip and, thankfully, now we have this beautiful book as a guide. —IRIS SMYLES, author of Dating Tips for the Umemployed Laurie Stone is the best writer I have encountered in quite a while. Her writing grabs me and in a sentence or two, I am in the middle of it. —JOHN LURIE, musician, painter, actor, director, and producer Somewhere along the way one recognizes that a simple seeming collection of pensées is really the coherent exploration of a distinct and valuable cultural point of view, one that we might have lost contact with, and that we are lucky to still have. —VINCE PASSARO, author of Violence, Nudity, Adult Content A witty, brutally honest meditation on how we live now, and most importantly, on the life worth living. Nothing is too small or too large for Laurie Stone’s laser vision—her willingness to say the things we’re not supposed to say or admit to doing the things we’re not supposed to do—all of which will keep you reading this book in one mad dash. —GLORIA JACOBS, editor and activist To my mind, Laurie Stone is a virtuousoi writer, and the ""streaming"" form—a kind of diary derived in part from blogs she has written on this site, particularly suits her genius. Her writing is full of attitude and has a defiant vibe I find completely compelling. Yes, she wants to entertain us—she is engaged in comedy—but its comedy of a most serious kind, like all real comedy. It's not schtick. Laurie means every word and the words ring true. Read this book! —ALEC MARSH, professor and author of Ezra Pound"

Author Information

Laurie Stone is the author of Everything is Personal: Notes on Now and My Life as an Animal, Stories. She has published numerous stories in such publications as n + 1, Waxwing, Tin House, Evergreen Review, Fence, Open City, Threepenny Review, and Creative Nonfiction. She lives in New York City.

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