Baggott, Julianna 1970(?)-

views updated

BAGGOTT, Julianna 1970(?)-

PERSONAL: Born c. 1970; married David G.W. Scott; children: Phoebe, Finneas, Theo. Education: University of North Carolina at Greensboro, M.F.A., 1991.

ADDRESSES: Home—Newark, DE. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Simon & Schuster, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. E-mail—email@julianna baggott.com.

CAREER: Writer and poet.

AWARDS, HONORS: Eyster Prize for short fiction, 1998; fellow, Delaware Division of Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ragdale Foundation, and Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.

WRITINGS:

This Country of Mothers (poetry), Crab Orchard Review and Southern Illinois University Press (Carbondale, IL), 2001.

Girl Talk, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 2001.

The Miss America Family, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 2002.

The Madam: A Novel, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 2003.

Contributor of numerous short stories and poems for literary journals, including Chelsea, Cream City Review, Ms. Magazine Poetry, Quarterly West, and Southern West. Poems included in Best American Poetry 2000. Girl Talk has been translated into five languages.

WORK IN PROGRESS: For the Boy in the Back Row, poems about the art of poetry.

SIDELIGHTS: As a young writer, Julianna Baggott watched as many of her contemporaries headed for the publishing capital of the world, New York City, to make their mark on the literary scene. After receiving her master's degree, however, Baggott and her poet husband headed for a small Delaware city, where she went to work writing short stories and then poetry as she began to raise a family. Baggott wisely wasn't all that interested in the literary scene. "I just wanted to write," she told Dirk Westphal for an article in Poets & Writers Magazine. "I didn't want to 'be a writer.'"

The distinction paid off for Baggott. In 2001 at the age of thirty-one, her first two books, a novel and volume of poetry, were published within months of each other. Baggott had arrived on the literary scene whether she liked it or not.

Baggott's novel Girl Talk, which appeared in bookstores a month before her collection of poetry titled This Country of Mothers, is a mother-daughter, coming-of-age tale in which thirty-year-old Lissy Jablonski, pregnant and unmarried, reflects back to the summer when she was fifteen. That summer, Lissy and her mother took a road trip after Lissy's father had run off with another woman. During the trip, Lissy and her mother engage in nights of "girl talk," and Lissy soon discovers secrets about her mother's past, including the fact that her mother once tried to commit suicide and that her biological father is actually the dwarfish Anthony Pantuliano, who is her mother's only true love.

Writing in the Washington Post Book World, Abby Frucht found the novel charming but lacking in substance. Although she described Baggott's novel as "clever," Frucht noted that the novel does not lead "to anything truly persuasive." Most critics, however, praised the book for its serious subject matter , which the author handles with humor and flair. "Baggott's biting, darkly comedic, and brutally honest narrative takes a sardonic look at suburbia and family dysfunction," wrote Carolyn Kubisz in Booklist. A Publishers Weekly reviewer called the novel a "touching . . . story that delivers more depth than its title might imply." The reviewer went on to note, "Baggott's multilayered, psychological tale is told with a deceptively light tone." Jan Blodgett, writing in the Library Journal, commented that the "juxtaposition of stories" between Lissy's present life and her mother's past "turns this first novel . . . from just a thirtysomething coming-of-age tale into a wise look at mother-daughter legacies."

This Country of Mothers is a collection of poems in which Baggott reflects on her experiences as a mother and as a daughter. In her poems, Baggott talks both about love and destruction in a manner that seems entirely personal while, at the same time, embracing universal themes. For example, in her poem "What We Didn't Talk about at Fifteen," Baggott writes about the discovery of a drowned girl who was "found naked and raped." The poem's narrator comments, "Didn't each of our mothers warn it could have been us?"

In her interview with Westphal for Poets & Writers Magazine, Baggott related that she turned from focusing solely on fiction to writing poetry, in part, to explore her feelings after giving birth. "I felt kind of betrayed by the animalness of it, and the physicality of [having kids], and the huge emotion of it," she told Westphal. "I wondered why no one had mentioned this to me."

In her second novel, The Miss America Family, Baggott once again focuses on a dysfunctional family. She tells her story from the views of two characters: Pixie Kitch, who was crowned Miss New Jersey and longed to become Miss America, and Pixie's sixteen-year-old son Ezra, an awkward teenager who is trying to make sense of a world turned topsy-turvy after his mother shoots her dentist husband and Ezra is sent to stay with his biological father, only to learn that his father is gay. "Baggott takes family dysfunction to a new level," wrote a reviewer in Publishers Weekly, noting that Baggott uses "wit and humor" to explore the failings of a seemingly perfect family. Carolyn Kubisz, writing in Booklist, called the novel "darkly comedic, and brutally honest." In her Library Journal review, Karen Traynos noted that The Miss America Family "establishes Baggott's remarkable talent for creating characters who resonate with readers."

As for her own reading preferences, Baggott told West-phal that, although she "fell in love with the novel as a form," she loves reading poetry. "If I'm going to get a book out of the library, I get poems," she said. "Poems have the ability to make me read them for pleasure. They demand it. They say, 'You have to love me.' Whereas other things don't; I read them because I'm taking a clock apart."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Booklist, November 15, 2000, Michelle Kaske, review of Girl Talk, p. 621; February 15, 2002, Carolyn Kubisz, review of The Miss America Family, p. 990.

BookPage, April, 2001, review of This Country ofMothers, p. 8.

Library Journal, March 15, 2002, Karen Traynor, review of The Miss America Family, p. 106.

New York Times Book Review, April 1, 2001, Elizabeth Judd, review of Girl Talk, p. 16.

Poets & Writers Magazine, May-June, 2001, Dirk Westphal, "Julianna Baggott, How to Be the Next Big Thing," pp. 32-37.

Publishers Weekly, November 20, 2000, review of GirlTalk, p. 43; April 1, 2002, review of The Miss America Family, p. 53.

Washington Post Book World, March 4, 2001, Abby Frucht, "Tangled Lives," p. 13.