A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
by Anthony Marra
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In a rural village in December 2004 Chechnya, a failed doctor Akhmed harbors the traumatized 8-year-old daughter of a father abducted by Russian forces and treats a series of wounded rebels and refugees while exploring the shared past that binds him to the child.Tags
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A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Anthony Marra
Hogarth
When I preordered this book a few months back, before the Boston bombings, I, like many, dare I say most, Americans had only a vague notion of Chechnya. I had some hazy idea that it was a province of Russia that was trying to secede and that there were rebels and reluctant Russian soldiers, and maybe even a suicide bomber or two. That was about as far as my NPR education had gotten me. Of course, I learned a lot more in the weeks before it was published and having read it I now feel I know and want to know even more. Make sure to read the afterwards where, in addition to a frank and refreshingly honest list of all the books, events and people that inspired particular parts of the show more novel, he also lists references and recommendations for further reading.
Marra shows us the lives of ordinary people during a war era that he depicts as brutal, capriciously cruel and above all, dehumanizing and the acts of mercy and memory, big and small, that allow them to retain their humanity. In the midst of this the Feds disappear a man one night leaving behind his daughter, hiding in the woods, and his one-time best friends. The books takes place over the next five days as one friend, Akhmed, tries to spare the girl, Havaa, her father's fate. Interspersed are flashbacks and a few flash-forwards, which to be honest reminded me of the television show, Lost, but in the best way, and more organically executed.
Despite being the self-acknowledged worst doctor in his hometown Akhmed manages to barter his medical services, such as they are, in exchange for sanctuary for Havaa and finds himself working for the ethnic russian physician, Sonia, whose work (dental floss stitches) has left him awestruck long before he met her. While he is truly an incompetent, if caring, doctor not suited to the saving of lives, he has a genuine gift for saving the memory of the dead and disappeared, in portraits dictated to him by the bereaved. No one comes to him for medical needs, but for a deeper spiritual need to see the image of a loved one one last time.
The book is filled with too many characters, each of whom is necessary, and each one distinctly drawn, to give a full list here, and besides I think the reader will be better off meeting and getting to know them without introduction. However a few of the standouts for me were Dokka, Havaa's father, who gives fleeing refugees, a place to stay, many of whom pay with small souvenirs (this is the word that Marra, uses, the french word for remember) of themselves and their lives which are given to Havaa, who keeps these memories in a suitcase that is always packed, just in case, Deshi, and earlier Deshi's twin sister who besides Sonia and the one-armed security guard, are the only staff of the hospital despite not being paid, and in Deshi's case despite being retired (and she makes sure everyone knows it). Jaded, weary and yet still committed to caring for the patients and Khassan, father of the village informer, a man whose life work has been to write a complete history of Chechnya, and later taking care of the dogs of those who disappeared because of his son.
In addition to being a truly great accomplishment of storytelling, I have to give a shout-out to Marra's use of language. He manages to craft phrases that are simultaneously lean and beautiful, often heartbreakingly so. Be prepared to finish it and move it right back onto your TBR pile as I have. It's too good to only read once. show less
Anthony Marra
Hogarth
When I preordered this book a few months back, before the Boston bombings, I, like many, dare I say most, Americans had only a vague notion of Chechnya. I had some hazy idea that it was a province of Russia that was trying to secede and that there were rebels and reluctant Russian soldiers, and maybe even a suicide bomber or two. That was about as far as my NPR education had gotten me. Of course, I learned a lot more in the weeks before it was published and having read it I now feel I know and want to know even more. Make sure to read the afterwards where, in addition to a frank and refreshingly honest list of all the books, events and people that inspired particular parts of the show more novel, he also lists references and recommendations for further reading.
Marra shows us the lives of ordinary people during a war era that he depicts as brutal, capriciously cruel and above all, dehumanizing and the acts of mercy and memory, big and small, that allow them to retain their humanity. In the midst of this the Feds disappear a man one night leaving behind his daughter, hiding in the woods, and his one-time best friends. The books takes place over the next five days as one friend, Akhmed, tries to spare the girl, Havaa, her father's fate. Interspersed are flashbacks and a few flash-forwards, which to be honest reminded me of the television show, Lost, but in the best way, and more organically executed.
Despite being the self-acknowledged worst doctor in his hometown Akhmed manages to barter his medical services, such as they are, in exchange for sanctuary for Havaa and finds himself working for the ethnic russian physician, Sonia, whose work (dental floss stitches) has left him awestruck long before he met her. While he is truly an incompetent, if caring, doctor not suited to the saving of lives, he has a genuine gift for saving the memory of the dead and disappeared, in portraits dictated to him by the bereaved. No one comes to him for medical needs, but for a deeper spiritual need to see the image of a loved one one last time.
The book is filled with too many characters, each of whom is necessary, and each one distinctly drawn, to give a full list here, and besides I think the reader will be better off meeting and getting to know them without introduction. However a few of the standouts for me were Dokka, Havaa's father, who gives fleeing refugees, a place to stay, many of whom pay with small souvenirs (this is the word that Marra, uses, the french word for remember) of themselves and their lives which are given to Havaa, who keeps these memories in a suitcase that is always packed, just in case, Deshi, and earlier Deshi's twin sister who besides Sonia and the one-armed security guard, are the only staff of the hospital despite not being paid, and in Deshi's case despite being retired (and she makes sure everyone knows it). Jaded, weary and yet still committed to caring for the patients and Khassan, father of the village informer, a man whose life work has been to write a complete history of Chechnya, and later taking care of the dogs of those who disappeared because of his son.
In addition to being a truly great accomplishment of storytelling, I have to give a shout-out to Marra's use of language. He manages to craft phrases that are simultaneously lean and beautiful, often heartbreakingly so. Be prepared to finish it and move it right back onto your TBR pile as I have. It's too good to only read once. show less
A harrowing, brutal book that still manages to capture hope and humanity amongst the atrocities of the two wars in Chechnya. A searing examination of how connections are formed and severed, and the horrific moral choices forced upon us in times of war. To inform or not? To return to a war torn country from relative comfort and safety? To sacrifice for a loved one? To sacrifice a loved one? One of my favorites of the year.
In 2004 Akhmed, the worst physician in Chechnya comes to Hospital No. 6 in Volchanck to volunteer. With him is an eight-year old girl whose father has just been disappeared by Russian troops. Her house has been burned to the ground, and he’s wants to trade his services for shelter for her. Sofia Andreyevna Rabina, the chief and only surgeon and doctor in Hospital No.6, is unimpressed with his skills. When asked how he would treat an unresponsive patient, he replies, “First I would have him fill out a questionnaire.”
Marra tells a story of five days that goes back decades and occasionally forward almost a century. It’s filled with truly funny black humor and genuine pathos. The constellation of vital phenomena referred to in the show more title is the beginning of the definition for “life,” in a Soviet medical dictionary. Death in the novel, on the other hand, is sometimes as erratic as a land mine and sometimes as regular as an informer turning in his next victim. This book is a skillfully constructed and extremely moving paean to life in the midst of random and reoccurring death during the two civil wars in Chechnya. show less
Marra tells a story of five days that goes back decades and occasionally forward almost a century. It’s filled with truly funny black humor and genuine pathos. The constellation of vital phenomena referred to in the show more title is the beginning of the definition for “life,” in a Soviet medical dictionary. Death in the novel, on the other hand, is sometimes as erratic as a land mine and sometimes as regular as an informer turning in his next victim. This book is a skillfully constructed and extremely moving paean to life in the midst of random and reoccurring death during the two civil wars in Chechnya. show less
Anthony Marra in his novel A Constellation of Phenomena gives us a profound, grim, sorrowful, harrowing picture of Chechnya and its people under the brutal rule of the Russians. There is so much pain. One chapter devoted to an argument between father and son, an informer against his fellow villagers, while residing in the same house had not spoken to each other in almost two years is particularly sad and memorable. However, in the form of a young girl, Havaa, we must face that life must and will go on. Mara skillfully helps us empathetically and unblinkered to see and experience these woes and traumas without overwhelming us.
Quotes: (page 141) “Their green headbands proclaimed Alalhu Akhbar in golden Arabic script. The villagers, show more Havaa among them, had never seen a rebel in the flesh. They were a land over the horizon; sons and brothers would go to the rebels and never be seen again. Several mothers spoke to them directly, asking after their sons, but most, Havaa among them, watched silently. A shudder passed through the entire assembly when the short field commander planted the green flag of national independence in the square. With this act the rebels—- so weak a few children with gardening tools could have overpowered them--- had officially seized the village, and thus damned it to a Russian liberation.”
(Page 235) “No fundamentalist undercurrent ran through the national culture before the first war. Sufism had always been the predominant Muslim sect, and Wahhabism was a foreign, wartime import. A few times a year, Arab Wahhabis came through the village in search of recruits. They promised rations, shelter, an eternity in Paradise, and, until that day of glorious martyrdom, a monthly salary of two hundred and fifty U.S, dollars. Few young men followed the monochromatic Wahhabi faith, but many were quite willing to be radicalized for a monthly salary that eclipsed what they would otherwise earn in a year. The war of independence so quickly conflated with jihad because no one cared about the self-determination of a small landlocked republic. Arab states would gladly fund a war of religion, but not one of nationalism.”
(page 274) “He hadn't forgot her face, she told herself; she was only helping him remember. And if she were deluding herself, so what? Weren't delusions better than desperation, false hopes better than none at all? As Natasha's calm, untroubled face emerged, Sonja's heart climbed her ribs. It drummed against each one, than rose to the neck, pressing against her throat.” show less
Quotes: (page 141) “Their green headbands proclaimed Alalhu Akhbar in golden Arabic script. The villagers, show more Havaa among them, had never seen a rebel in the flesh. They were a land over the horizon; sons and brothers would go to the rebels and never be seen again. Several mothers spoke to them directly, asking after their sons, but most, Havaa among them, watched silently. A shudder passed through the entire assembly when the short field commander planted the green flag of national independence in the square. With this act the rebels—- so weak a few children with gardening tools could have overpowered them--- had officially seized the village, and thus damned it to a Russian liberation.”
(Page 235) “No fundamentalist undercurrent ran through the national culture before the first war. Sufism had always been the predominant Muslim sect, and Wahhabism was a foreign, wartime import. A few times a year, Arab Wahhabis came through the village in search of recruits. They promised rations, shelter, an eternity in Paradise, and, until that day of glorious martyrdom, a monthly salary of two hundred and fifty U.S, dollars. Few young men followed the monochromatic Wahhabi faith, but many were quite willing to be radicalized for a monthly salary that eclipsed what they would otherwise earn in a year. The war of independence so quickly conflated with jihad because no one cared about the self-determination of a small landlocked republic. Arab states would gladly fund a war of religion, but not one of nationalism.”
(page 274) “He hadn't forgot her face, she told herself; she was only helping him remember. And if she were deluding herself, so what? Weren't delusions better than desperation, false hopes better than none at all? As Natasha's calm, untroubled face emerged, Sonja's heart climbed her ribs. It drummed against each one, than rose to the neck, pressing against her throat.” show less
Rating: 4.5* of five
The Publisher Says: In a small rural village in Chechnya, eight-year-old Havaa watches from the woods as Russian soldiers abduct her father in the middle of the night and then set fire to her home. When their lifelong neighbor Akhmed finds Havaa hiding in the forest with a strange blue suitcase, he makes a decision that will forever change their lives. He will seek refuge at the abandoned hospital where the sole remaining doctor, Sonja Rabina, treats the wounded.
For Sonja, the arrival of Akhmed and Havaa is an unwelcome surprise. Weary and overburdened, she has no desire to take on additional risk and responsibility. But over the course of five extraordinary days, Sonja’s world will shift on its axis and reveal show more the intricate pattern of connections that weaves together the pasts of these three unlikely companions and unexpectedly decides their fate. A story of the transcendent power of love in wartime, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is a work of sweeping breadth, profound compassion, and lasting significance.
My Review: The Doubleday UK meme, a book a day for July 2014, is the goad I'm using to get through my snit-based unwritten reviews. Today's prompt is the twenty-first, discuss a book you expected to hate but ended up loving.
Yes.
Now, there is always a matter of taste when it comes to appreciating or otherwise a given writer's work. Do the writer's words ring you like a bell? Do they smack you in the chops? Do they slither into your ears emitting glassy slime like a hagfish? That's the chief factor in determining your ultimate response to a work. I think some writers are equivalent of chocolatiers, making bonbon after truffle upon caramel. Lovely taken one at a time; urpsome in bulk. I think Marra is a chocolatier of a writer in this book.
Mmmmm. Yum. Sing it, Brother Anthony, sing it.
Yes. I concur. A bit baroque, permabehaps, but yes.
Oh gag me! A milk chocolate strawberry creme-filled emetic-level Whitman's Sampler spitback!
So here I was, alternately uplifted and revolted, and still...this story made me stop what I was thinking and attend to it, and that's no mean feat. The horror of stories about war is, for me, only partially touched by the battles and the soldiers and the wounds they inflict on themselves and each other. The people whose lives are utterly upended by wars fought in their name and on their land are so often simply disappeared in toponymic abstraction (eg, the Mexican-American War). This novel doesn't look so much at the war as at the warred-over place and its inhabitants.
Marra's gift is in making images of the place vivid:
And the people who live in the violated, wounded place:
It's a very well-made book, it's got a helluva wallop of a message, and it's fun to read. I was expecting nothing more than a flashy MFA-from-Iowa-Writers'-Workshop meretricious bauble. Some parts of the book are, in fact, that very thing. One's own taste determines where the balance point lies. Are there more surprisingly good moments than there are expectedly Shiny-Brite ones?
And there I say yes. Yes, this is more beautiful than brummagem.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. show less
The Publisher Says: In a small rural village in Chechnya, eight-year-old Havaa watches from the woods as Russian soldiers abduct her father in the middle of the night and then set fire to her home. When their lifelong neighbor Akhmed finds Havaa hiding in the forest with a strange blue suitcase, he makes a decision that will forever change their lives. He will seek refuge at the abandoned hospital where the sole remaining doctor, Sonja Rabina, treats the wounded.
For Sonja, the arrival of Akhmed and Havaa is an unwelcome surprise. Weary and overburdened, she has no desire to take on additional risk and responsibility. But over the course of five extraordinary days, Sonja’s world will shift on its axis and reveal show more the intricate pattern of connections that weaves together the pasts of these three unlikely companions and unexpectedly decides their fate. A story of the transcendent power of love in wartime, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is a work of sweeping breadth, profound compassion, and lasting significance.
My Review: The Doubleday UK meme, a book a day for July 2014, is the goad I'm using to get through my snit-based unwritten reviews. Today's prompt is the twenty-first, discuss a book you expected to hate but ended up loving.
Life: a constellation of vital phenomena—organization, irritability, movement, growth, reproduction, adaptation.
Yes.
Now, there is always a matter of taste when it comes to appreciating or otherwise a given writer's work. Do the writer's words ring you like a bell? Do they smack you in the chops? Do they slither into your ears emitting glassy slime like a hagfish? That's the chief factor in determining your ultimate response to a work. I think some writers are equivalent of chocolatiers, making bonbon after truffle upon caramel. Lovely taken one at a time; urpsome in bulk. I think Marra is a chocolatier of a writer in this book.
There is something miraculous in the way the years wash away your evidence, first you, then your friends and family, then the descendants who remember your face, until you aren’t even a memory, you’re only carbon, no greater than your atoms, and time will divide them as well.
Mmmmm. Yum. Sing it, Brother Anthony, sing it.
Invader and invaded held on to their fistfuls of earth, but in the end, the earth outlived the hands that held it.
Yes. I concur. A bit baroque, permabehaps, but yes.
For their entire lives, even before they met you, your mother and father held their love for you inside their hearts like an acorn holds an oak tree.
Oh gag me! A milk chocolate strawberry creme-filled emetic-level Whitman's Sampler spitback!
So here I was, alternately uplifted and revolted, and still...this story made me stop what I was thinking and attend to it, and that's no mean feat. The horror of stories about war is, for me, only partially touched by the battles and the soldiers and the wounds they inflict on themselves and each other. The people whose lives are utterly upended by wars fought in their name and on their land are so often simply disappeared in toponymic abstraction (eg, the Mexican-American War). This novel doesn't look so much at the war as at the warred-over place and its inhabitants.
Marra's gift is in making images of the place vivid:
The trees they passed repeated on and on into the woods. None was remarkable when compared to the next, but each was individual in some small regard: the number of limbs, the girth of trunk, the circumference of shed leaves encircling the base. No more than minor peculiarities, but minor particularities were what transformed two eyes, a nose, and a mouth into a face.
And the people who live in the violated, wounded place:
As someone whose days were defined by the ten thousand ways a human can hurt, she needed, now and then, to remember that the nervous system didn't exist exclusively to feel pain.
It's a very well-made book, it's got a helluva wallop of a message, and it's fun to read. I was expecting nothing more than a flashy MFA-from-Iowa-Writers'-Workshop meretricious bauble. Some parts of the book are, in fact, that very thing. One's own taste determines where the balance point lies. Are there more surprisingly good moments than there are expectedly Shiny-Brite ones?
Entire years had passed when he was rich enough in time to disregard the loose change of a minute, but now he obsessed over each one, this minute, the next minute, the one following, all of which were different terms for the same illusion.
And there I say yes. Yes, this is more beautiful than brummagem.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. show less
Anthony Marra said that he wrote the kind of book that he wanted to read. His interest in the Chechnyan region was stimulated by spending university time in St Petersburg, shortly after the assassination of a Russian journalist who wrote extensively about the Chechen wars. Novels about the Chechnyans don't exist, so he wrote one. He said he didn't want to write about the policies, the history, the politics, but about the people, the civilians.
The novel opens with "On the morning after the Feds burned down her house and took her father, Havaa woke from dreams of sea anemones." Havaa is eight years old, her father has been 'disappeared', and the next five days of trying to save Havaa from a similar fate span the book, buttressed by show more memories and accountings from various times in the previous ten years.
The story is unwound from different spools, and these are picked up and slowly woven together. The prose is often graceful and poetic, elevating the story above a mere war novel.
"Their embrace didn’t break off so much as dissipate, an exhalation releasing whatever tenderness was briefly held between them. His father’s hug was an act of precaution rather than love, so that if Ramzan did not return from the mountains, his father would have the consolation of knowing his final gesture toward his son had been one of kindness rather than disappointment."
Marra's often beautiful prose and insightful scenes belie his youth. (He tweets that despite his 28 years, he has a lot of gray hairs.)
Some events are described a couple of times, each from a different perspective of different characters. It is a sobering reminder that one shouldn't be judgmental - knowledge of the backstory may change your mind.
The novel shows immense compassion towards its characters. There is also humour (frequent), and love (not schmaltzy), and revenge. It is, after all, about Life.
"Life" is defined as "a constellation of vital phenomena" in the Russian medical dictionary of one of the characters. A 'constellation' is an apt description of the construction of these events and how they relate to each other. In this book, Life is also very much the successful avoidance of Death. That is no easy task in this world of double-crossing, back-stabbing, greedy careless cruelties, so retaining Life becomes a phenomenal accomplishment too.
Like this book. show less
The novel opens with "On the morning after the Feds burned down her house and took her father, Havaa woke from dreams of sea anemones." Havaa is eight years old, her father has been 'disappeared', and the next five days of trying to save Havaa from a similar fate span the book, buttressed by show more memories and accountings from various times in the previous ten years.
The story is unwound from different spools, and these are picked up and slowly woven together. The prose is often graceful and poetic, elevating the story above a mere war novel.
"Their embrace didn’t break off so much as dissipate, an exhalation releasing whatever tenderness was briefly held between them. His father’s hug was an act of precaution rather than love, so that if Ramzan did not return from the mountains, his father would have the consolation of knowing his final gesture toward his son had been one of kindness rather than disappointment."
Marra's often beautiful prose and insightful scenes belie his youth. (He tweets that despite his 28 years, he has a lot of gray hairs.)
Some events are described a couple of times, each from a different perspective of different characters. It is a sobering reminder that one shouldn't be judgmental - knowledge of the backstory may change your mind.
The novel shows immense compassion towards its characters. There is also humour (frequent), and love (not schmaltzy), and revenge. It is, after all, about Life.
"Life" is defined as "a constellation of vital phenomena" in the Russian medical dictionary of one of the characters. A 'constellation' is an apt description of the construction of these events and how they relate to each other. In this book, Life is also very much the successful avoidance of Death. That is no easy task in this world of double-crossing, back-stabbing, greedy careless cruelties, so retaining Life becomes a phenomenal accomplishment too.
Like this book. show less
“For years he’d lived with the fear of murder, torture, or disappearance, as all men of his age did, and it was the senselessness that truly frightened him; that the monumental finality of death could come arbitrarily was more terrifying than the eternity to follow.”
- Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Powerful narrative about the horrors of the wars in Chechnya, focusing on five days in the Second Chechan War in 2004 and flashing back to the prior ten years, including the First Chechan War. Havaa, an eight-year-old girl living in rural Chechnya, is rescued by a neighbor, Akhmed, after her father is abducted by Russian security forces. Akhmed, a barely competent doctor and artist, takes Havaa to a distant hospital, show more run by Sonja, a skilled doctor whose sister is missing. The story is a slowly-building patchwork quilt of characters and storylines. It is centered around interpersonal relationships and reactions to the chaos of war.
Marra’s writing is stellar and his characters are deeply drawn. The novel shifts back and forth in time, providing pieces of the story from different characters’ points of view. Themes include responses to fear, betrayal, the atrocities of war, moral conscience, the attempt to save others, and the desire to retain a shred of optimism in midst of relentless suffering.
Sensitive readers beware: I felt a bit queasy at times reading scenes of torture, castration, execution, amputation, human trafficking, and the aftermath of exploding landmines. It was a challenge in the beginning to continue to read about the carnage of war and humankind’s inhumanity to fellow humans but by the end I was glad to have endured. I admired the author’s skill at bringing together the interrelated personal stories into a cohesive whole. It was an emotionally draining story of people trying to retain compassion and hope in the wake of horrific brutality. Recommended to readers of literary historical fiction that can handle a large dose of darkness, misery, cruelty, and tragedy. show less
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This novel is, among other things, a meditation on the use and abuse of history, and an inquiry into the extent to which acts of memory may also constitute acts of survival.
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Author Information
5+ Works 4,313 Members
Anthony Marra received a bachelor's degree from the University of Southern California and an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Narrative Magazine, and MAKE Magazine. His short story Chechnya won a 2010 Pushcart Prize and the 2010 Narrative Prize. His debut novel, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, was show more published in 2013 and received the inaugural John Leonard Prize. He also received 2018 Simpson Family Literary Prize. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Some Editions
Awards and Honors
Awards
Distinctions
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
- Original title
- A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
- Original publication date
- 2013
- People/Characters
- Havaa; Akhmed; Sofia Andreyevna "Sonja" Rabina; Dokka; Ramzan; Khassan (show all 10); Natasha; Ula; Deshi; Maali
- Important places
- Chechnya; Eldár, Chechnya; Volchansk, Chechnya
- Important events
- Chechen conflict
- Epigraph
- It was of this death that I was reminded by the crushed thistle in the midst of the plowed field.
-Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murad - Dedication
- To my parents and sister
- First words
- On the morning after the Feds burned down her house and took her father, Havaa woke from dreams of sea anemones.
- Quotations
- She was harder to pin down than the last pickle in the jar.
Life: a constellation of vital phenomena---organization, irritability, movement, growth, reproduction, adaptation.
“A lizard fucks a crab and nine months later a turtle pops out. It’s called evolution.” (Abu’s brother - p. 108)
“And where are the books I asked for?”
“...A third cousin in the West is asking for them from Amazon.”
“What’s that?”
“I haven’t any idea.”
“Then in London you will be an au pair. Do you know what that is? It’s a French word. It means you will watch the children while the parents are at work.”
“So I will be a grandmother?” (p. 196) - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)What all heard, what all remembered, was the fingerless man leaning back in the doctor's arms, lifting his face, and laughing, a sound none had heard in many days, his cheeks wet as he roared a name—Havaa, Havaa, Havaa—and those witnessed would remember how here, in Pit B, a man who had lost his freedom and his fingers, and would soon lose his life, had found in that name an immense, spinning joy.
- Publisher's editor
- Sagnette, Lindsay
- Blurbers
- Patchett, Ann; Johnson, Adam; Boyle, T.C.; Meloy, Maile; Lam, Vincent; Parker, Sarah Jessica (show all 11); Wolitzer, Meg; Charles, Ron; Ausubel, Ramona; Freeman, John; Sacks, Sam
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