Gayle Brandeis

Gayle Brandeis is the author, most recently, of the memoir, The Art of Misdiagnosis (Beacon Press) and the novel in poems, Many Restless Concerns (Black Lawrence Press). Other books include Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write (HarperOne); the poetry collections The Selfless Bliss of the Body (Finishing Line Press); and Dictionary Poems (Pudding House); the novels The Book of Dead Birds (HarperCollins), which won Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction; Self Storage (Ballantine), a Target Breakout Book; Delta Girls (Ballantine); and her first novel for young readers, My Life with the Lincolns, a statewide read in Wisconsin. Her poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies (such as the New York Times, The Washington Post, Salon, Longreads, The Rumpus, The Nation, and O, The Oprah Magazine) and have received several awards, including the QPB/Story Magazine Short Story Award, a Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Award, a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and Notable Essays in the Best American Essays 2016 and 2019. Gayle was named 2018 Multi Genre Maverick Writer by the Willamette Writers. Her essay on the meaning of liberty was one of three included in the Statue of Liberty’s Centennial time capsule in 1986, and in 2004, The Writer magazine named Gayle a Writer Who Makes a Difference. Gayle holds a BA in “Poetry and Movement: Arts of Expression, Meditation and Healing” from the University of Redlands and an MFA in Creative Writing/Fiction from Antioch University. She served as Inlandia Literary Laureate from 2012- 2014. Gayle currently lives in Incline Village, Nevada, and teaches at Sierra Nevada University. Her kids were born in 1990, 1993 and 2009.