Claire Vaye Watkins, Gold Fame Citrus
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD “5 UNDER 35” HONOREE
2:00 pm | Chelsea Depot (125 Jackson St.) See map.
Claire Vaye Watkins debut novel, Gold Fame Citrus, was recently named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, NPR, Vanity Fair, LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post, The Atlantic, Refinery 29, Men’s Journal, Lit Hub, Book Riot, Los Angeles Magazine, Powells, BookPage and Kirkus Reviews. Gold Fame Citrus describes a future American West ravaged by drought, where water has disappeared, turning California into desert wasteland, and its citizens forced into internment camps and prevented from leaving the desert. From this desolate place,a young couple and a mysterious child head east on a dangerous road, seeking another kind of life. Born in Bishop, California in 1984, Vaye Watkins was raised in the Mojave Desert, first in Tecopa California and then across the state line in Pahrump, Nevada. A graduate of the University of Nevada Reno, Claire earned her MFA form the Ohio State University, where she was a Presidential Fellow. A Guggenheim Fellow, Claire in on the faculty of the Hell Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. She is also the co-director, with Derek Palacio, of the Mojave School, a free creative writing workshop for teenagers in rural Nevada. In addition to Gold Fame Citrus, Vaye Watkins is the author of Battleborn, an award-winning collection of stories that earned Vaye Watkins the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” honor.
At once beautiful and profoundly unsettling, [Gold Fame Citrus] sears its way into the brain, burning hot through the devastating journey and lingering long after the last page is turned.”–ELLE
