CONWAY, Martha

PERSONAL:

Female. Education: Attended University of California—Berkeley.

ADDRESSES:

Home—San Francisco, CA. Agent—Matt Williams, The Gernet Co., 136 East 57th. St., New York, NY 10022. E-mail—twelvebliss@yahoo.com.

CAREER:

Author; writes a regular column for the Web site Enterzone.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Fellowship, California Arts Council, 1997, for creative writing.

WRITINGS:

12 Bliss Street, St. Martin's Minotaur (New York, NY), 2003.

Author of the hyper-fiction Girl Birth Water Death, 1993. Stories have been published in the Iowa Review, Epoch, the Quarterly, Carolina Quarterly, Massachusetts Review, Puerto del Sol, and other journals. Contributor to the anthology Coffeehouse: Writings from the Web.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

All Her Favorite Fruit, a novel.

SIDELIGHTS:

Martha Conway is the author of the novel 12 Bliss Street. In the work, Nicola, a thirty-one-year-old Web designer, is having a bad day. She has just received an eviction notice, has to put up with a terrible boss, and the guy she regularly flirts with seems nice but is really a serial killer. After attending her nightly exercise class, Nicola is kidnapped by the teens Dave and Davette. She figures out that the brains behind the kidnapping is her ex-husband, who is trying to get money out of her to pay off his loan sharks. Nicola decides to take matters into her own hands to outwit her captors and fix the problems in her life. Books and Bytes contributor Harriet Klausner claimed, "12 Bliss Street is a funny upbeat chick-lit mystery." A Kirkus Reviews contributor claimed, "Short-story writer Conway's jump to novel length is as lean and sexy as her cardio-kickboxing heroine."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2003, review of 12 Bliss Street, p. 644.

ONLINE

Bookloons,http://www.bookloons.com/ (October 26, 2003), Hillary Williamson, review of 12 Bliss Street.

Books and Bites,http://www.booksnbytes.com/ (October 26, 2003), Harriet Klausner, review of 12 Bliss Street.

Martha Conway Home Page,http://www.marthaconway.com (October 26, 2003).

Mystery Ink,http://www.mysteryinkonline.com/ (October 26, 2003), Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, review of 12 Bliss Street.

Mystery Reader,http://www.themysteryreader.com/ (October 26, 2003), Jennifer Monahan Winberry, review of 12 Bliss Street.

Sunset Beacon,http://www.sunsetbeacon.com/ (February 25, 2004), Jonathan Farrell, "First-Time Author Sets Stage in Sunset, Ocean Beach.*"