| Jade Sharma |
Remembering Catapult instructor Jade Sharma
,
Jade Sharma died on July 24, 2019. She was 39 years old.
Showing posts with label Jade Sharma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jade Sharma. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 10, 2021
Twitter Reacts to the Death of Author Jade Sharma at 39
| Jade Sharma |
Twitter Reacts to the Death of Author Jade Sharma at 39
September4, 2019
Jade Sharma, whose 2016 debut novel, Problems, drew praise from critics and fellow authors, has died at 39.
Her death was reported by Catapult, where she worked as a writing instructor. Ruth Curry, who edited Problems, said that Sharma died on July 24.
Jade Sharma / The Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day I Woke Up As a Debut Author
| Jade Sharma |
The Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day I Woke Up As a Debut Author
Jade Sharma Tries to Be Happy About the Publication of Problems
Jade Sharma
August 4, 2016
Alarm. Every beep is louder. Why does this technology exist? Today: a lot of novels didn’t come out that should have, and some did come out, like mine. I sit up and I look at my room: clean jeans on the sofa, dirty t-shirt on the floor, half-open drawers, a flat bottle of soda without the cap. The room of a child. The longer you stay in bed the worse it will be. Sometimes I can slip into the day like Jason Bourne into a crowd. Other days I have to drag myself out of bed like a mother who has had it up to here. Today is one of those days.
Mourning Jade Sharma, Her Irreverence, Her Audacity
| Jade Sharma |
Mourning Jade Sharma, Her Irreverence, Her Audacity
Melissa Mesku Remembers the Author of Problems
Melissa Mesku
February 3, 2020
The night I met Jade Sharma, I saw her verbally shit all over the guest of the evening, Paul Auster, at a literary event in New York. From the back of the audience, she stood and assailed him at length over a minor point related to Beckett. Look, she said witheringly, I studied Beckett. I mean, I’m sure you know stuff—they, like, paid you to come here and talk, but… It was incredibly rude, totally uncalled for. I liked her immediately.
Problems by Jade Sharma / Review by Kirkus
PROBLEMS
An absorbing novel carried by a seemingly hopeless protagonist you will want to befriend and save.
July 5, 2016
The sardonic story of one woman’s eating disorder and drug abuse.
Maya, the appealing protagonist of this aptly titled debut novel, is not OK. Her husband, Peter, is an alcoholic; her mother is dying of multiple sclerosis; her late father gave her no attention or affection while he was alive; she is having an affair with a comparably unloving father figure, her professor; she has been unable to get pregnant, despite desperately wanting a child; she is anorexic, living on, at most, 400 calories’ worth of peach yogurt a day; and, on top of all this, or maybe because of it, she’s been regularly using heroin—a “chipper”—since she was 18. At first, Maya tries to keep her habit minimal, never using more than three days in a row. But when Peter leaves her, those boundaries vanish; she thinks to herself, “Just be a junkie now.” To earn money for drugs, she cruises Craigslist for men willing to pay for dates and intimate encounters. And so begins a cycle of varyingly violent sex, extreme heroin use, and lost days. The ease of such a life leaves little motivation to stop. “Also,” she writes, “I wasn’t thin and blond. I could have cleaned up if I was.” In graceful prose, the narrator recounts the hours spent high: “Sounds folded back into the world, moving on, light-years from the living room where I lay around, hardly living.” The novel is written so well that the relentless and destructive rhythm of heroin abuse seems calming, metaphysical, and occasionally even funny. Sharma's descriptions are vivid and sage—“Sometimes it felt like there was blackness underneath everything. Like a Rothko painting, how the blackness bleeds through”—lulling readers into a similarly opiate state to which they will readily succumb and from which, like the protagonist, it will take some time to recover.
An absorbing novel carried by a seemingly hopeless protagonist you will want to befriend and save.
Tuesday, November 9, 2021
Jade Sharma / Problems / Extract
We're delighted to present an extract from Problems, the debut novel by Jade Sharma, published by Tramp Press.
"This book is definitely about disillusionment"Jade Sharman
Dark, raw, and very funny, Problems introduces us to Maya, a young woman with a smart mouth, time to kill, and a heroin hobby that isn't much fun anymore. Maya's been able to get by in New York on her wits and a dead-end bookstore job for years, but when her husband leaves her and her favorite professor ends their affair, her barely-calibrated life descends into chaos, and she has to make some choices.
Jade Sharma / “Don’t ever be boring”
| Jade Sharma |
Jade Sharma
“Don’t ever be boring”
Posted by Sue Leonard on Sunday 17th June 2018
As a child Jade wanted to be a comedian. She used humour to get her mum to laugh when she was in a bad mood.
She spent her teenage years in Japan.
“It was the perfect place to rebel. You could get beer and cigarettes out of vending machines and it was safe.”
Jade toyed with the idea of film, but then she started performing spoken word.
“I liked it a lot, and made people laugh by saying shocking things, like, ‘Why can’t I just masturbate instead of getting another job?’”
Problems by Jade Sharma review / Strangely uplifting
BOOK OF THE DAY
Problems by Jade Sharma review – strangely uplifting
A young junkie parades her life of deceit in this frank and sharp debut
Mon 21 May 2018 07.00 BST
I
had concerns with the cover of Problems. That title, screamed in fuchsia all-caps on a vaguely urban, desolate background… it comes off a little “awkward YA novel”, with characters probably called Trent, or Lexxxi. You know how it is. A sort of millennial Melvin Burgess, but not nearly as good. The PR blurb says that this is an “edgy” book, clearly unaware that if someone described a party as “edgy” you would immediately choose not to go.
‘It’s a shame there aren’t more three / Dimensional representations of women’
‘It’s a shame there aren’t more three-dimensional representations of women’
Jade Sharma challenges taboos with her quirky, edgy novel about a heroin addict
You don’t expect a novel about a heroin addict to be a hoot.
Problems, the debut novel by New York author Jade Sharma, is the story of Maya, a writer whose life is running away from her. She has a kind but heavy-drinking husband she is certain is about to leave her, she’s having an affair with a disinterested older man, her drug habit is escalating and she’s struggling with an eating disorder.
Problems / Jade Sharma talks about debut novel and crazy bitch syndrome
PROBLEMS: JADE SHARMA
TALKS ABOUT HER
DEBUT NOVEL AND
CRAZY BITCH SYNDROME
Kristen EvansJuly 5, 2016
Emily Books is a five-year-old feminist e-subscription service and publisher run by Emily Gould and Ruth Curry. This summer, the publishers are partnering with Coffee House Press to bring their first-ever imprint to life.
Q&A with Jade Sharma, author of the edgy debut ‘Problems’
| Jade Sharma |
Q&A with Jade Sharma, author of the edgy debut ‘Problems’
BY MICHELE FILGATE
JULY 22, 2016 6 AM PT
Jade Sharma is trying to break rules. Her debut novel, “Problems,” begins with all-consuming monotony: “Somewhere along the way there stopped being new days.” Maya, the narrator, is addicted to heroin, in a loveless marriage, having an affair with a guy who isn’t really interested in her and struggling with an eating disorder, among other things. Her problems could fill a book — and in fact, they do, in a brisk, mordantly funny, fragmented narrative that is refreshingly honest, despite the fact that Maya is a liar. An Army brat who grew up in Germany, Delaware and Tokyo, Sharma, 36, lives in New York City. We spoke in her apartment on the Lower East Side; this interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Monday, December 5, 2016
The 25 Best Books of 2016 / Part three
| Jade Sharma |
The 25 Best Books of 2016
PART THREE
A collection of the best novels, non-fiction, and memoirs from the past year.
At a time when politics have dominated the national conversation in a way that can often feel overwhelming, the best books of 2016 so far have provided escapism and comfort. They've shown us that empathy is a great virtue, and that art can transcend the unhappiness of the everyday. These 25 books are all highly recommended.
By Maris Kreizman and Angela LedgerwoodDec 5, 2016
18. Rich and Pretty by Rumaan Alam
Rumaan Alam has a near telepathic knowledge of the female mind. His debut novel would still be a lovely, emotionally raw meditation on a complicated friendship between two women, even if the author weren't a man. But Rich and Pretty is especially jolting because it's clearly a feat of intense observation and imagination. Alam understands the petty (and not so petty) jealousies that accompany friendship, and the small digs and larger issues that divide and reunite friends. —MK
17. Lust and Wonder by Augusten Burroughs
After Running with Scissors and Dry, Augusten Burroughs closes out an unforgettable trilogy of memoirs with Lust and Wonder. In Lust and Wonder we find Augusten sober (or, at least, soberer), a successful writer, and rather unlucky in love. It's only fitting that the next piece of the puzzle to solve involves romantic relationships, and the failures and heartaches that always accompany such quests. That he finds an ideal mate is not a spoiler, but a well-earned happy ending for the lonely and disaffected. That his dream man with the singular laugh happens to be his friend, his literary agent, and a co-parent to their growing menagerie of dogs is even more satisfying. It takes nothing away from Augusten's struggles to acknowledge that in a lifetime of uncertainty and unease, it really does get better. —MK
16. Proxies by Brian Blanchfield
The premise of this autobiographical essay collection is simple: Blanchfield writes from memory alone, without consulting any outside resources to fact check. As the author explains, "I wrote these essays with the internet off." The result is unlike anything written before. The 24 single topic essays in Proxies are short and focused (topics range from owls to housesitting to frottage), but every single one leads to a more personal revelation or a wider point about the author's life or the greater world. The conclusions of his writings feel organic and authentic, and the 20+ pages of corrections at the end of the book only validate how powerful writing from memory and relying only upon what's inside your own brain can be. —MK
15. Problems by Jade Sharma
"Behind every crazy woman is a man, sitting very quietly, saying, 'What? I'm not doing anything.'" If this sentence doesn't make you want to stand up and cheer, stop reading this blurb right now. If you prefer to read books with cuddly, likable heroines who always make good and healthy decisions, stay away from this novel. But if you enjoy complicated protagonists who don't necessarily pass the "likability" test but do speak to the blackest part of your soul, Problems is for you. Jade Sharma's debut is a darkly funny character study of an unhappy yet witty-as-hell woman whose self-destructive streak is as appalling as it is somehow understandable. Problems challenges readers to forget traditional redemption stories and yet to still find empathy for the messiest of heroines. —MK
14. Party of One by Dave Holmes
Esquire Editor-at-Large Dave Holmes uses music—21 songs, and many others that also get name checked—to tell the story of his life with exactly the amount of humor and sensitivity and celebration of fandom that you'd expect from him (lots). The former MTV VJ and pop culture whiz has written the kind of book where, at the end one of the most affecting and charming chapters in the book about coming out at his very Catholic college, he rewards you for finishing with a photo of Melrose Place's Grant Show. (Thank you, Dave.) Party of One is as charming as it is funny, and it's a testament to how pop music has the power to shape our lives. —MK
13. What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell
An American schoolteacher living abroad meets a 23-year-old male prostitute in a public restroom in Bulgaria. Money is exchanged. A long, complicated relationship ensues, one based in lust and shame and dread. What Belongs to You is a short novel, but Garth Greenwell's sentences are expansive and revelatory and poetic. Greenwell juxtaposes the narrator's experiences in an unprogressive, formerly Communist country still recovering its infrastructure, to the narrator's own childhood, growing up gay and closeted in the oppressive American South. What Belongs to You is a lovely meditation on fear and acceptance, desire and oppression, and the disparity between two cultures. —MK
Friday, July 1, 2016
21 Books You Should Read This July_Three part
| Hisham Matar |
21 Books You Should Read This July
PART THREE
We Asked Lit Hub Contributors About What They're Looking Forward To
JULY 1, 2016
Seinfeldia, Jennifer Keishin Armstrong (Simon & Schuster)
I think about Seinfeld a few times an hour. There’s always something happening that has me flashing back to the show that I’ve watched all the way through at least three times, but I didn’t realize how little I knew about the history of the show until I read Jennifer Keishin Armstrong’s wonderful deep dive into the “show about nothing.” Really a must for any fan of the show, or just a really weird and wonderful moment in television history.
–Jason Diamond (Lit Hub contributor)
The Return, Hisham Matar (Random House)
Hisham Matar’s first novel, In the Country of Men, was narrated by a nine-year-old who watches Gaddafi’s dictatorship divide his country and his family and wonders, “Can you become a man without becoming your father?” That novel was a National Book Critics Circle and Man Booker finalist. Matar’s memoir tells of life under the dictatorship, of exile, and the ongoing grief of losing his father, a major opposition leader. (His father was kidnapped from their apartment in Cairo in 1990, and imprisoned in Libya, never to be seen again.) After the revolution, he returns to find out his father’s fate. Grief is “a divider,” he writes. “It moved each one of us into a territory of private shadows, where the torment was incommunicable, so horribly outside of language.”
–Jane Ciabattari (Lit Hub contributor)
The Storyteller: Tales Out of Loneliness, Walter Benjamin, illustrated by Paul Klee (Verso)
In college I carried around an acid-yellow copy of Illuminations and waxed haughty-as-a-motherfucker about the angel of history and the aura of authenticity and the arcade and the flaneur. But time rushes on (with its face to the past) and life presents ever fewer opportunities to take a Hegelian-Marxist-Kabbalistic-Romantic deep-dive. Until you find out Benjamin wrote riddles that are weirder and even more tender and arch than you’d expect (and make you feel like a genius to solve). And then you find out he wrote fiction too.
–Emily Firetog (Lit Hub Managing Editor)
How to Be a Person in the World, Heather Havrilesky (Doubleday)
As a Virgo, and thus, a detail-oriented rule follower, I am particularly amenable to being told what to do. This is doubly true when I’m being told by Heather Havrilesky, the woman behind The Cut’s (previously The Awl’s) Ask Polly advice column and several of my least disastrous personal decisions. If you’re in need of someone to tell you, lovingly, how to get your shit together, in prose expertly seasoned with “fucks,” I am certain this book will do the trick. (Havrilesky also writes an excellent column for Bookforum. She’s not paying me, I promise).
–Jess Bergman (Lit Hub Assistant Editor)
Problems, Jade Sharma (Coffee House Press/Emily Books)
Since it was announced, I’ve been very excited for Coffee House’s new imprint, Emily Books; their first title is Jade Sharma’s debut novel, Problems. Although, as the title suggests, the book deals with a host of serious issues (including, but not limited to, the narrator Maya’s “heroin hobby,” deeply troubled marriage, chronically ill mother, eating disorder, and much older, ex-professor lover), the voice is incredibly funny, offhandedly insightful, and captivating.
—Blair Beusman (Lit Hub Associate Editor)
The Heavenly Table, Donald Ray Pollock (Doubleday)
The Heavenly Table—a darkly comic new novel from “Hillbilly Gothic” maestro Donald Ray Pollock about a trio of dirt-poor Ohio brothers who, in the throes of their newfound zeal for violence and mayhem, cross paths with a down-on-his-luck farmer named Ellsworth. Set against the backdrop of America’s entry into WWI, with the echoes of the Civil War still reverberating through the country, it looks like a hell of a ride.
–Dan Sheehan (Lit Hub Assistant Editor)
On Trails, Robert Moor (Simon & Schuster)
After walking the length of the Appalachian Trail, from Georgia to Maine, Robert Moor returned to New York City and began to see trails everywhere: ants marching across his windowsill, dirt-track shortcuts across the corners of parks, the feint grooves in old stone steps… Fascinated by the way we create trails (and how they create us) Moor’s On Trails is a thoroughly researched blend of science and philosophy that offers a fresh perspective on the lived world.
–Jonny Diamond (Lit Hub Editor)
https://lithub.com/21-books-you-should-read-this-july/
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