Love, Loosha - by Lucia Berlin & Kenward Elmslie

Book Synopsis

At the time of her death in 2004, Lucia Berlin was known as a brilliant writer of short stories, beloved by other writers but never achieving wide readership or acclaim. That changed in 2015 with the publication of A Manual for Cleaning Women, a collection of some of her best work. Almost overnight, Lucia Berlin became an international bestseller as readers everywhere fell in love with her smoky, gin-soaked voice--at once dark and yearning, funny and wry, naïve and wise. Love, Loosha is the extraordinary collection of letters between Lucia Berlin and her dear friend, the poet and Broadway lyricist Kenward Elmslie. Written between 1994 and 2004, their correspondence reveals the lives, work, and literary obsessions of two great American writers. Berlin and Elmslie discuss publishing and social trends, political correctness, and offending others and being offended. They gossip. They dish. They entertain--for not only are Elmslie and Berlin writing to each other, they are writing for each other.

Review Quotes

"An intimate, touching portrait of a friendship, one bound by a love of literature."--Publishers Weekly

"These letters read like a literary love affair between two brilliant writers who aim to delight, entertain, and confide in each other. What Berlin says of Elmslie's side of the correspondence is true of both: 'Beautiful writing, good gossip, funny stories. . . . You and I have known remarkable people.'"
--Jennifer Dunbar Dorn, editor of Collected Poems: Edward Dorn

About the Author

Chip Livingston is the author of five books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction and is a professor of creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He is a former fiction student and close friend of Lucia Berlin, and, upon Lucia's introduction and suggestion, he became Kenward Elmslie's personal assistant for ten years.

Lucia Berlin was the author of several short-story collections. In 2015 A Manual for Cleaning Women was published posthumously and became both a New York Times and an international bestseller.

Kenward Elmslie was a member of the New York School of poetry, having written fifteen books of poems, several plays, and a novel as well as opera librettos and books and lyrics for Broadway and off-Broadway musicals.