The Snarling Girl and Other Essays [Paperback]

In sixteen essays published over the past decade, acclaimed novelist Elisa Albert considers everything from the creative process to reproductive justice, ambition to Ani DiFranco, Judaism to the ethos of punk, all in the midst of making a home in the strange city of Albany, New York.

With wit and wariness, skepticism and surrender, this collection offers a first-of-its-kind window into the life and mind of an author Shalom Auslander once called “Bukowski with a vagina and a motherf*cker of a hangover.”

Whether writing about doula training, struggling to embroider local community, art vs commerce, antisemitism, or growing up in the shadow of Hollywood, Albert is heartfelt, rigorous, and delightfully self-aware.

USMaybe you’ll be an actress. Maybe you’ll do stand up. Maybe you’ll suck dick for money. Maybe you’ll wear intense glasses and make dramatic proclamations into a swank office telephone. Maybe you’ll meet your married lover for a drink on a rainy night wearing nothing under a coat. Maybe you’ll make art in an airy loft in a deserted part of town. Surely there’ll be long ruminative walks through the park. The voice-over will be witty as hell.

You can be weird in New York, that much is certain. You can be strange and melancholy and buxom and tall and dark and discerning. You can behave generally like the exuberant dork bitch dyke intellectual you semi-consciously understand yourself to be. Apparently they value that sort of thing there!Elisa Albert is the author of the novelsHuman Blues, After Birth, The Book of Dahlia, and the story collectionHow This Night is Different.She has worked as a bookseller, barista, executive assistant, full-spectrum doula, housewife, Hebrew School teacher, and professor of creative writing.

"The Snarling Girlis Elisa Albert at her finest: vulnerable and acerbic, devastating and insightful."—Foreword RlE