Profile: Haven Kimmel

A look at some of the personalities at the TW Fest

Okay, I fell half-in love with Haven Kimmel 20 pages into her astonishing memoir, A Girl Named Zippy, and immediately went out and found her debut, She Got Up Off the Couch. Both were tales of growing up in the Midwest in a weird family, and both would be greatly appealing to anyone who enjoyed Augusten Burroughs' Running With Scissors (the wonderful book, not the mediocre movie); it's no surprise that Burroughs is a huge Haven Kimmel friend and fan.

Here's an interview that Ms. Kimmel did with Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon. One telling quote:

For a while I thought that Zippy might be my ultimate experiment in terms of what can be done with first person narration. I was interested, first of all, in how long it's possible to sustain a child's voice intelligibly, meaningfully, and without losing the interest of the reader. It turns out you can do it a damn long time. The comment I get most often about Zippy is, "I wish it were four hundred pages longer."

I agree--it was one of those books that I hated to see end.

Sat., Mar. 31, 11:30 am:
"Writers Read"

Sun., Apr. 1, 10 am:
"Writing From Memory: An Insider's Look at Autobiography"

Sun., Apr. 1, 11:30 am:
"Wild At Heart"