Crawford, Lynn

PERSONAL:

Female; married; children: two sons.

ADDRESSES:

Home—MI. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Hammer Books, 1200 Broadway, Apt. 3-C, New York, NY 10001.

CAREER:

Writer. Worked for twelve years as a social worker.

WRITINGS:

Solow (short stories), Hard Press (West Stockbridge, MA), 1995.

Blow (novella), Hard Press (West Stockbridge, MA), 1999.

Simply Separate People (novel), Black Square/ Hammer Books (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor to anthologies, including Fetish Fiction, Four Walls Eight Windows (New York, NY); and The Oulipo Compendium, Atlas Press (London, England). Contributor to periodicals, including Art in America, Bookforum, American Ceramics, and Detroit Metro Times.

SIDELIGHTS:

Lynn Crawford's first full-length novel, Simply Separate People, is the story of people who have all lost loved ones. The four alternating narrators, as well as other characters, all have quirky obsessions that help them cope with their grief. Gradually, their lives are drawn together. Jim Feast, a writer for the American Book Review, found Crawford's book to be one of "unrelenting despair," but other reviewers commented on the book's emotional range and wit. "Crawford carefully balances the intensity and oddness of their private lives with a good portion of humor," observed Brian Evenson in the Review of Contemporary Poets. Evenson praised Crawford as a "varied and consummate writer" capable of marrying "the outlandish with a complex narrative structure" in a book that works "on the level of story and aesthetically." Crawford's unique writing was appreciated by David McGrath, who mused in the Detroit Metro Times that her syntax "had less to do with sound than with sight: Her prose flickers more than breathes; like a movie camera, it anticipates the path of the human eye." Noting that like many first novels, Simply Separate People could be faulted for having too much exposition and too little dialogue, McGrath went on to say that these traits give it a feel that is "more like nonfiction, or a round of memories, than a novel. But in an age in which many fear that fiction's forum is dwindling and getting drowned out by nonfiction, such a blend may seem natural and market-wise."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Detroit Metro Times, November 6, 2002, David McGrath, review of Simply Separate People.

Review of Contemporary Fiction, spring, 2003, Brian Evenson, review of Simply Separate People, p. 153.

American Book Review, March-April, 2003, Jim Feast, review of Simply Separate People.