Authors Guild Website for Fabienne Marsh

Juliette, a New Yorker transplanted to Portland, Oregon for a teaching job journeys through single parenthood, orphanhood, widowhood, new love, neurotic parents, beloved students, and a life-altering bereavement group.  Along the way, Juliette blends her acerbic wit with an admirable willingness to sit in her sadness and we gain entrance to what the other side of grief looks like. Set over the course of several months, and alternating between Juliette's narration, a plot filled with surprises, and letters written to her deceased loved ones, Fabienne Marsh rips open Juliette's heart so we readers might feel less alone. There might not be a cure for sorrow, but there is a salve, and it's JULIETTE, RISING.

Jim Rosso was anticipating a lonely millennium...

So begins the story of Jim Rosso, a 38-year-old suburban divorcé, who finds himself alone, uncoupled and dating for the first time since college.

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

Marsh “exhibits the same sophistication and wit that marked her debut.” - The New York Times

“Marsh has written a wonderful book. There’s a little wisdom in every sentence and laughter on every page. I cried until I laughed.” —Michael Lewis, author of Liar’s Poker and The Big Short

“a New Yorker who writes like a tar heel and thus gives us this funny novel filled with exuberant tragic characters.” —Library Journal

“Like Frankie (in Carson McCuller’s The Member of the Wedding) Marsh’s Meredith views the world in a wistful, touchingly idiosyncratic way, while always standing apart from the action she so beautifully renders.” —Meg Wolitzer in the Chicago Tribune

“sylphlike, winningly punctilious...Marsh writes so gracefully and has an acute (if inwardly spiraling) sense of humor.” — People

"a literary masterpiece" -Midwest Book Review

“Splashingly saucy, benevolently brashy, endlessly edgy, devil- ishly delightful and ravishingly readable.” —The Macon Beacon (Georgia)

“packs a punch that is wry and witty as well as, yes, uplifting.” —Metroland (Albany)

“Marsh’s prose is so direct and unfussy that its powerful emotional wallop surprises.”

“delightful and surprising.” —City Pages (Minneapolis)

"In a warm, richly drawn coming-of-age story, a delightfully wry observant 18-year-old with a fondness for frankness and affection-tinged cynicism learns about love and mortality during one important summer." —Booklist, Editor's Choice

Simon & Schuster (Summit Books)
Washington Square Press

"compulsively readable...Kate and Michael assume the dimensions of real people, warm, confused and intelligent..." — Chicago Tribune

“witty...a charming debut.” —Time Out (London)

“A fresh spin on (the) first novel...” —The New York Times Book Review

“What an impressive debut...Great charm and power and the ability to breathe life into each character. LONG DISTANCES deserves every hyperbole it receives. The reviewer would attempt to add an ornate and spectacular one here, but he is too impatient to get back and re-read the book.”—Orange Country Register (California)

“Strong, wise and entertaining...Marsh’s wit is devilish. Her
compassion great.” —Boston Herald

“compulsively readable” — Chicago Tribune

“Fabienne Marsh uses a respected literary form, the epistolary, seldom seen in contemporary works, with skill, grace and deft effectiveness; she creates a real and likable family...” —Pittsburgh Press

“What makes the novel fascinating is...the technique...By the end of the novel, I felt like a small town postal worker snooping through mail, piecing together my own version of this unfolding drama.” —Charlotte Observer (North Carolina)

“very funny, touching, and sad all at once” —James Atlas

“A SUPERB FEAT OF MAGIC, A MASTERFUL NOVEL.” —San Mateo Times (California)

“A surprisingly accomplished effort for a first-time author...” —ALA Booklist

“This book is pure magic. I loved reading every page of it. Long Distances is the debut of a superb new writer.” —Pat Conroy

“This book is made up of letters and postcards many of which are so accurate they make your skin crawl.” —The Observer (London)

Literary Editor’s Selection (The Times, London) A Book-of-the-Month-Club Alternate Selection Washington Square Press Paperback

I was invited by Seamus Heaney to attend his poetry class at Harvard, given that I was both abundantly conversant with and besotted by his work.  I wanted to write about him as a teacher of poetry at Harvard.  After multiple rejections of my article in the US, Blake Morrison, an early biographer of Heaney, suggested I submit my article to Poetry Review.  I was on a journalism fellowship in London when "Seamus Heaney at Harvard" was published in Poetry Review; Mick Imlah (who later earned the Foward Prize for poetry) was editor.

Interview with architect Dean Nota