Dermansky, Marcy

views updated

Dermansky, Marcy

PERSONAL: Married Jurgen Fauth (a writer and critic). Education: Attended Haverford College; University of Southern Mississippi, M.A.

ADDRESSES: Home—Astoria, NY. Agent—c/o Author Mail, William Morrow and Company, 10 E. 53rd St., 7th Fl., New York, NY 10022.

CAREER: Writer and critic. About.com, film critic. Previously worked in temporary jobs and in full-time administrative position.

MEMBER: New York Online Film Critics Society.

AWARDS, HONORS: Carson McCullers Short-Story Prize, Story magazine, 1999; Andre Dubus Novella Award, Smallmouth Press, 2002; MacDowell fellow.

WRITINGS:

Twins (fiction), William Morrow (New York, NY), 2005.

Stories have been published in numerous journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, Indiana Review, New Orleans Review, Mississippi Review, Gulf Coast, and McSweeney's. Stories also included in anthology Love Stories: A Literary Companion to Tennis.

SIDELIGHTS: Marcy Dermansky's novel, Twins, reveals the lives of identical twins Sue and Chloe as each narrate their own story in alternating chapters. Although the sisters form a tight bond, Sue is jealous of Chloe, whom Sue perceives as being perfect in so many ways. The novel primarily focuses on the time between the girls' thirteenth birthday, when they get tattoos as a sign of their devotion to each other, through their eighteenth birthday. Sue is the more devoted of the two and tries to constrain Chloe within her orbit, while Chloe wants to be more independent and experience a normal teenaged life. In addition to this identity struggle between the twins, the trying teen years prove no different for the two, who deal with drug abuse, love, and sex as well as negligent parents. "Her portrayal of the difficulty of growing up and of raising children in today's world rings true," wrote Christine DeZelar-Tiedman in a review in Library Journal. A Publishers Weekly contributor called the book an "entertaining debut" and also noted there is "an overarching fable-like quality to this moving and well-written story." Writing in Kirkus Reviews, a critic commented that the author "gives her misfits real dignity and avoids psycho-social clichés … while she neatly captures the girls' suburban high school world with every telling detail." The reviewer went on to write: "Sometimes despairing, sometimes blackly humorous, always engrossing and thoroughly original," Twins is "a wonderful debut."