Latest Publications
Fiction
“SixFeet” - a short story in 2020: Good Writing from a Bad Year, edited by Gordon Haber (also available on Kindle)
Nonfiction / Criticism
'Unsettled Ground' Lets Its Oddballs Stay Defiantly Odd - Review in NPR of Claire Fuller’s new book, Unsettled Ground
“‘As a Female Recluse, I Took My Reclusiveness Very Seriously’: An Interview with Helen Oyeyemi” - Interview in Hazlitt
Bio
Image by Joshua Redwine
Tattoo by Ann Loaris
Ilana Masad is a queer Israeli-American writer of fiction, nonfiction, and criticism. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, NPR, StoryQuartlerly, Tin House’s Open Bar, 7x7, Catapult, Buzzfeed, and many more. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, she has received her Masters in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where she is currently a doctoral student. She is the author of the novel All My Mother’s Lovers.
Available May 26, 2020, from Dutton.
Pre-order from your local indie bookstore, and/or from:
Bookshop.org ; Indiebound ; Barnes & Noble ;
Amazon ; Apple Books
Intimacy has always eluded twenty-seven-year-old Maggie Krause—despite being brought up by married parents, models of domestic bliss—until, that is, Lucia came into her life. But when Maggie’s mom, Iris, dies in a car crash, Maggie returns home only to discover a withdrawn dad, an angry brother, and, along with Iris's will, five sealed envelopes, each addressed to a mysterious man she’s never heard of.
In an effort to run from her own grief and discover the truth about Iris—who made no secret of her discomfort with her daughter's sexuality—Maggie embarks on a road trip, determined to hand-deliver the letters and find out what these men meant to her mother. Maggie quickly discovers Iris’s second, hidden life, which shatters everything Maggie thought she knew about her parents’ perfect relationship. What is she supposed to tell her father and brother? And how can she deal with her own relationship when her whole world is in freefall?
Told over the course of a funeral and shiva, and written with enormous wit and warmth, All My Mother's Lovers is a unique meditation on the universality and particularity of family ties and grief, and a tender and biting portrait of sex, gender, and identity, challenging us to question the nature of fulfilling relationships.
P.S. Also, here’s a Goodreads link!
Early Praise:
“This ambitious, deft, compassionate debut novel finds eternal truths in a very contemporary story: that even those we care for most remain mysteries to us, that our judgments of others' lives are always inadequate, that love demands heroism. Ilana Masad is an exciting talent." —Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You and Cleanness
“Masad’s impressive novel delves into varieties of that strange magic, love, and of its expansive, life-shaping possibilities. All My Mother’s Lovers is a debut of rare and vital generosity.” —R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries
“Ilana Masad's debut is a queer tour de force. A tender look at love, relationships, motherhood, and how we oftentimes hurt the people we love most with our silence. Compelling and astonishing, All My Mother's Lovers is a novel with family dynamics at its heart. This book goes hard and does not disappoint. Masad is a writer on the rise.” — Kristen Arnett, Mostly Dead Things
“Ilana Masad’s All My Mother’s Lovers is a stunning excavation of the profound destabilization of grief, the secrets that twist like vines around the root system of a family, and the terror and grace of learning to be vulnerable before others. Maggie and Iris, the daughter and mother that sit at this novel’s heart, are both indelible, with a bond that not even death can demolish. A giant-hearted and sharply funny debut.” - Laura van den Berg, The Third Hotel