Alix Strauss

Alix Strauss is a four-time published author and media social satirist based in Manhattan. She has been a featured journalist on CBS, CNN, ABC, NBC's Today Show and various national morning and talk shows. Her articles have appeared in The New York Post, Time, The New York Times, Marie Claire, Entertainment Weekly, Self, and many other publications. Her four published books include her two non-fiction works Have I Got A Guy For You and Death Becomes Them: Unearthing the Suicides of the Brilliant, the Famous, and the Notorious, and her two works of fiction The Joy of Funerals and Based Upon Availability. She was chosen as a speaker for both the Jewish Book Council and Israel Bonds. Strauss also spoke last year at the University of Connecticut's suicide prevention week in conjunction with Death Becomes Them.

Strauss lectures extensively not only for bookstores and book clubs, but at conferences, colleges and universities, synagogues, libraries, country clubs, etc. For her most recently published novel Based Upon Availability, a novel that takes place in Manhattan's swanky Four Seasons Hotel, Strauss designed a book tour around hotels. She is in fact known for her unusual reading events and was quoted by Publishers Weekly to say "I believe in finding venues that are in keeping with the theme of one's work."[1] True to her words, Strauss held the launch party for her first novel The Joy of Funerals at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel.[2] She also held a reading for Death Becomes Them: Unearthing the Suicides of the Brilliant, the Famous & the Notorious at the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.[3]

Biography

Strauss currently lives and works in Manhattan and is a well-known freelance journalist. She graduated from New York University with a degree in educational theater and for the past 15 years has taught creative writing, fiction writing, writing for magazines, and personal essay writing.[4]

Writing career

Strauss' widely published articles include everything from celebrity interviews, beauty, and travel to food, fashion, trends, etc. She has interviewed Viggo Mortensen, Kristin Chenoweth, Carrie Fisher, and many others. She is known for her unusual and edgy articles including, for example, one she wrote after having a consultation with sexologist Betty Dodson, Ph.D. for some masturbation tips.[5]

The Joy of Funerals was published in 2003 by St. Martin's Griffin. It has been described as "a novel in stories" tied together by the narrative that follows the life of Nina, a single woman in her thirties who attends the funerals of the previous tales' deceased characters, hoping to find some human connection. The various stories feature a variety for characters including a widow in "Recovering Larry" who looks for male companionship at the funerals she attends to the woman in "Swimming Without Annette" who has a troublesome obsession with her lover's killer. It has been described as Sex and the City meets Six Feet Under and contains elements of dark comedy, sex, and tragedy.

Have I Got A Guy For You: What Really Happens When Mom Fixes You Up (Polka Dot Press, 2008) is an anthology of 26 true stories, edited by Strauss, about mothers who have fixed up their daughters on horrifically bad blind dates. These true stories are personal narratives from today's top contemporary female writers. Examples of these failed dates include a mother who wrote to Michael Gelman, the producer of Live with Regis and Kelly hoping to fix him up with her daughter, a woman whose blind date serenaded her, dressed head to toe in leather in the middle of a Starbucks, a writer who spent her blind date - all eight hours of it - at a Dungeons & Dragons convention complete with costumes, and many others.

In 2009 HarperCollins Publishers printed Strauss's third book Death Becomes Them: Unearthing the Suicides of the Brilliant, the Famous, and the Notorious, a non-fiction work about famous suicides.

Strauss' most-recently published novel Based Upon Availability (HarperCollins Publishers) came out in June 2010. In similar fashion to The Joy of Funerals, the book follows the lives of several women tied together by one central narrator, Morgan, a hotel manager - an emotionally battered character, haunted by her dead sister's memory, desperately seeking human connection. The book's jacket cover describes the hotel as "offering sanctuary to some, solace to others, the hotel captures their darkest moments as they grapple with family, sex, power, love, and death."[6]

Strauss's essays have been anthologized in Sex, Drugs & Gefilte Fish ... The Heeb Storytelling Collection and her short fiction has been featured in the Primavera, Hampton Shorts, The Idaho Review, Quality Women's Fiction, Stories from the Blue Moon Cafe III, and A Kudzu Christmas.

The Joy of funerals has been optioned for film. Strauss will write the screenplay and Stockard Channing is expected to direct the film adaptation.[7] Death Becomes Them has been optioned for a television show by a well-known producer.[8]

Awards and honors
  • The Ingram Award for The Joy of Funerals
  • Best Debut Novel from The New York Resident for The Joy of Funerals
  • David Dorenstein Creative Writing Award for the short story "Shrinking Away" featured in The Joy of Funerals
  • Various awards from the Wesleyan Writers Conference, the Skidmore College Writer's Institute, the Sarah Lawrence Summer Program, and the Squaw Valley's Screenwriters' Summer Program.

References
  1. Adriani, Lynn. "Author Brings Readings to Hotels". Publishers Weekly. July 12, 2010.
  2. Wadler, Joyce. "Our Last Publisher Buried Us Without a Party". The New York Times. 2003. See http://www.alixstrauss.com/joy/media.html Archived March 9, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
  3. Yakowicz, Will. "Author Ponders Death - at Green-Wood Cemetery". The Brooklyn Paper. October 19, 2009.
  4. "Alix Strauss: Author and Trend Journalist". Archived from the original on March 20, 2011. Retrieved March 15, 2011.
  5. "Alix Strauss: Author and Trend Journalist". Archived from the original on March 9, 2011. Retrieved March 15, 2011.
  6. Strauss, Alix. Jacket cover of Based Upon Availability. HarperCollins Publishers. New York, NY. 2010.
  7. "The Joy of Funerals for Channing". Monsters and Critics. August 9, 2005.
  8. Alix Strauss's official website "Alix Strauss: Author and Trend Journalist". Archived March 20, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
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