Jean Zimmerman

Category: Culture

  • A Boat in the Desert

    Life finds me this April Fool’s Day in a boat on a lake in the middle of a desert in the state of Arizona. It’s gusty and the waters form a chop that throws droplets onto me and the rest of the sightseers, who seem to have formed a plan to come aboard dressed in…

  • Savage Girl O Mag Pick

    Savage Girl might never be an Oprah Pick. But that doesn’t mean the book doesn’t rank some standing in O The Oprah Magazine. A friend of mine mentioned that she read the glossy’s April 2014 issue and saw Savage Girl highlighted there as one of “Ten Titles to Pick Up Now.” She probably noticed this while…

  • Deep in the Novel Cave

    Sshhh. I can’t hear you. I am writing a book. Or as Father John Misty said in a song last year, “I’m writing a novel, because it’s never been done before.” I want to make amends for letting my daily posts slide a bit recently. It’s partly that I’m preoccupied by the release of Savage…

  • Wolf Boys and Girls

    Feral children, wild children, human beings raised by wolves… or bears… or goats… or rats… How credible are the stories of their existence? They’ve inflamed the popular imagination for centuries. Surely it is impossible to believe that a mama wolf will take in a human baby and suckle it with her own. Surely it is…

  • Talk-Ossining, NY Public Library

    It will be a special pleasure to give a talk about Savage Girl at my local library, where I have spent untold hours doing research, writing, and dreaming out the windows. If you are somewhere nearby on this Wednesday, March 26, please come!

  • Saying It in Silver

    Do you like sparkle? I do. I’ve been happy lately to usher Savage Girl into the world, delighted to see people get ahold of the book and resonate to the story. There’s nothing like a fresh book out there reaching people to make you feel good — after all, isn’t reaching people a big part…

  • Savage Girl on the Today Show

    Savage Girl was featured on this morning’s Today Show — check out the segment, Bill’s Books, hosted by David Ushery with book reviewer Bill Goldstein!    

  • Savage Girl’s Central Park

    [Here is another post that I am also putting up under the Savage Girl tab.] The Central Park, as it was known in the nineteenth century, had only been officially open for two years when Savage Girl arrives at the Delegate Mansion in 1875. The scrupulously landscaped plot of 843 acres, designed by Frederick Olmsted and…

  • Savage Girl at the Bookstore

    It’s funny. As an author you work and work on a new book, you write, revise, get copyedited, read galleys, proofread again and again. You see the finished product, it arrives at your doorstep in a box of 20 advance copies for you to do with what you will. On publication day you know the…

  • The Larky Life

    [This post will be saved on the site under the Savage Girl tab.] Cross dressing permeates the world of Savage Girl. Tahktoo, also known as the berdache, goes about in women’s dress a good portion of the time. He is brawny and manly but feels more comfortable as a rule in a gown. (That doesn’t mean…

  • The Victorian Debut

    The process of achieving a societal debut in the late nineteenth century was one in which eighteen-year-olds got their first taste of all the splendour that money could buy. Yet at the same time, the coming out process was one that was as constricting as it was exhilarating. The art of coming out was demanding,…

  • The Mansions of Fifth Avenue

    [I will be adding essays in upcoming days under the Savage Girl tab on this site. Here is the first.] It took two hundred years for the well to do of Manhattan to migrate uptown from the foot of the island to frontier of 59th Street, and even then they weren’t completely sure that living so…

  • Pub. Date-Savage Girl

    There are no two better things in the world. The day your book is published. And pancakes.

  • Savage Girl Talk-Twain House

    For anyone wondering when I am venturing forth to speak about Savage Girl, one such event is coming up on March 14, a Friday, at the Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford, Connecticut. I am extremely happy to speak at Twain’s genteel abode because some of his early work informed Savage Girl. Specifically, the great writer…

  • I Brake for Knit Projects

    If I had to choose between these knitted winners, it would have to be the animal heads. No, the full-body suit. No, the meat. Definitely the meat. After this short commercial break, we bring you back to the Oscars, live.