BROOKS, Colette

PERSONAL:

Born in Seattle, WA. Education: Attended Reed College and Yale School of Drama.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—c/o Author Mail, W. W. Norton and Co., Inc., 500 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10110. E-mail—info@colettebrooks.com.

CAREER:

New School University, New York, NY, professor of writing.

AWARDS, HONORS:

PEN/Jerard Fund award, 2002, for In the City: Random Acts of Awareness.

WRITINGS:

In the City: Random Acts of Awareness, W. W. Norton (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor to journals and periodicals, including Virginia Quarterly Review, Georgia Review, Southwest Review, Partisan Review, and New Republic.

SIDELIGHTS:

Colette Brooks reflects on an anonymous city that is obviously New York in her debut book, In the City: Random Acts of Awareness. She writes of her fascination, since childhood, with the city and shares her love of historical tidbits with the reader, along with commentary on unnamed famous people and her gleanings from the unnamed New York Times. Among her "random acts of awareness" are her observations of the statue "adrift in the harbor" and of looking up at the building that was the site of the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of Mary 25, 1911, in which primarily immigrant female workers died when they were unable to escape because their employers had locked them in. In other passages, she writes of overheard conversations, people talking on cell phones, and the notices posted on telephone poles offering rewards for lost dogs, as well as of crimes committed and occasions celebrated.

Leslie Brody wrote in Ruminator Review that the book "is one in a recent trend, in which the memoirist comes to interpret a familiar environment as if it were an exotic, alien space." Hyde Park Review of Books Onlinecritic Scott Korb said that Brooks is "looking for random gems, little stories, which are not really that hard to come by in a city as story-rich as the one she is writing about." Korb continued, "The best part is that she has, indeed, found some diamonds among the vast collection of various stones of various quality and value. She writes very well. And she looks in all the right urban places." A Publishers Weekly reviewer added that "Brooks's tone is pitch-perfect NPR-style meditation, all hushed tones juxtaposed with wry commentary and commonsense insights."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, June 1, 2002, Donna Seaman, review of In the City: Random Acts of Awareness, p. 1649.

Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2002, review of In the City, p. 465.

Publishers Weekly, April 22, 2002, review of In the City, p. 58.

Ruminator Review, winter, 2002, Leslie Brody, review of In the City, p. 33.

ONLINE

Colette Brooks Home Page,http://www.colettebrooks.com (June 21, 2004).

Hyde Park Review of Books Online, http://www.hprob.com/ (fall, 2002), Scott Korb, review of In the City.*