Illinois Authors

Ballantine Books New York : 2010

The disparate lives of two women—a single mother working hard to make ends meet and a young figure skater at the top of her game—entwine in an unforgettable novel of warmth, depth, and wisdom. Izzy and her daughter, Quinn, have been on the move for all of Quinn’s nine years. Izzy works the fields as a fruit picker, following the produce north and south through the growing season. When they reach a struggling pear orchard in the Sacramento River Delta, Izzy intends it to be just another way station in their nomadic lives. But the orchard and its kindly owners capture Quinn’s heart, and Izzy briefly forgets that she’s running from a past that still haunts her—until a strange incident brings national media attention to the Delta. Seemingly a world away, Karen is a rising young star in figure skating with an edgy, daring new partner. Nathan is everything her old teammate wasn’t: sexy, dangerous, and extremely headstrong. As Karen nears her eighteenth birthday, the partners find themselves on the world stage—and the simmering intensity between them finally erupts. As each woman struggles with a sudden thrust into the spotlight, their narratives become more intertwined—until Izzy’s past and Karen’s future finally collide.

Overcup Press 2023

In Drawing Breath: Essays on Writing, the Body, and Loss, PEN/Bellwether Prize-winning writer Gayle Brandeis' essays explore both the writing life and the embodied life, along with potent intersection between the two. From the title essay investigating the connection between writing and breath to the final essay, which delves into Brandeis' experience with long-haul Covid and its impact on her creative voice, this collection is infused with the urgency of mortality, thrumming with grief, authenticity, and a deep love for both language and the world of the senses.

HarperOne San Francisco : 2002

Get Your Creative Juices Flowing A sumptuous, sensuous writing guide from the author of the award-winning The Book of Dead Birds

Institute of Arts & Social Engagement [Place of publication not identified] : 2011

In this first volume of a new series dedicated to socially engaged literature by women, guest editor Gayle Brandeis introduces us to powerful storytelling that speaks out loud the atrocities of our world, breaking the silence and taking pause. Included are the traumatic tale of a mother’s loss during a clandestine border crossing, the unionization of a women’s light bulb factory in pre-World War II Chicago, a child whose life has been stunted by a futuristic device she is stored in on a daily basis, and many more. This year’s writers represent a diversity of geographies, stylistic sensibilities, and perspectives. Through poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction, they universally challenge us to reconsider what “women’s experience” looks and sounds like—they require us to break our hearts, celebrate even the smallest triumphs, and to critically examine the seemingly mundane moments of everyday life, all through the medium of language. Featuring new and established voices, this collection is a must read for compassionate and thoughtful readers from all walks of life.

Black Lawrence Press 2020

Poetry. Women's Studies. Many Restless Concerns gives voice to the hundreds of girls and women killed by Countess Erzsébet Báthory of Hungary between 1585 and 1609. The ghosts of these girls and women speak in chorus, in a hybrid of poetry and prose, compelling us to bear witness to the violence enacted against them, and to share their quest for justice—not only for themselves, but for all girls and women to come. A lyrical, polyphonic protest against silence, Many Restless Concerns speaks to today’s upswell of voices claiming their own worth.

Henry Holt and Co. New York : 2010

My dad used to be Abraham Lincoln. When I was six and learning to read, I saw his initials were A. B. E., Albert Baruch Edelman. ABE. That's when I knew. Mina Edelman believes that she and her family are the Lincolns reincarnated. Her main task for the next three months: to protect her father from assassination, her mother from insanity, and herself―Willie Lincoln incarnate―from death at age twelve. Apart from that, the summer of 1966 should be like any other. But Mina's dad begins taking Mina along to hear speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr in Chicago. And soon he brings the freedom movement to their own small town, with consequences for everyone, in Gayle Brandeis's My Life with the Lincolns.

Inlandia Institute 2014

Oranges helped create the Golden Dream of Southern California from the time Eliza and Luther Tibbetts planted two Washington Navel Oranges in their Riverside yard in 1873. Over a century later, Inlandia Literary Laureate Gayle Brandeis has assembled a juicy collection of poetry, prose and recipes that explore, celebrate and memorialize our region's powerful citrus heritage. Together, these voices create a chorus singing of sweetness and loss, deep roots and seismic change. You will never look at an orange the same way again. Take a bite of Orangelandia!

Ballantine Books New York : 2007

Flan Parker has always had an inquisitive mind, searching for what’s hidden below the surface and behind the door. Her curious nature and enthusiastic probing have translated into a thriving resale business in the university housing complex where she lives with her husband and two young children. Flan’s venture helps pay the bills while her husband works on his dissertation, work that lately seems to involve more loafing on the sofa watching soap operas than reading or writing. The secret of her enterprising success: unique and everyday treasures bought from the auctions of forgotten and abandoned storage units. When Flan secures the winning bid on a box filled only with an address and a note bearing the word “yes,” she sets out to discover the source of this mysterious message and its meaning. Armed with a well-worn copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grassthat she turns to for guidance and solace, Flan becomes determined to find the “yes” in her own life. This search inward only strengthens her desire to unearth the hidden stories of those around her–in particular, her burqa-clad Afghan neighbor. Flan’s interest in this intriguing and secretive woman, however, comes at a formidable price for Flan and her family. Set during the year following the September 11 attacks, Self Storage explores the raw insecurities of a changed society. With lush writing, great humor, and a genuine heart, Gayle Brandeis takes a peek into the souls of a woman and a community–and reveals that it is not our differences that drive us apart but our willful concealment of the qualities that connect us.

Beacon Press 2017

Award-winning novelist and poet Gayle Brandeis’s wrenching memoir of her complicated family history and her mother’s suicide Gayle Brandeis’s mother disappeared just after Gayle gave birth to her youngest child. Several days later, her body was found: she had hanged herself in the utility closet of a Pasadena parking garage. In this searing, formally inventive memoir, Gayle describes the dissonance between being a new mother, a sweet-smelling infant at her chest, and a grieving daughter trying to piece together what happened, who her mother was, and all she had and hadn’t understood about her. Around the time of her suicide, Gayle’s mother had been working on a documentary about the rare illnesses she thought ravaged her family: porphyria and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. In The Art of Misdiagnosis, taking its title from her mother’s documentary, Gayle braids together her own narration of the charged weeks surrounding her mother’s suicide, transcripts of her mother’s documentary, research into delusional and factitious disorders, and Gayle’s own experience with misdiagnosis and illness (both fabricated and real). Slowly and expertly, The Art of Misdiagnosis peels back the complicated layers of deception and complicity, of physical and mental illness in Gayle’s family, to show how she and her mother had misdiagnosed one another. Gayle’s memoir is both a compelling search into the mystery of one’s own family and a life-affirming story of the relief discovered through breaking familial and personal silences. Written by a gifted stylist, The Art of Misdiagnosis delves into the tangled mysteries of disease, mental illness, and suicide and comes out the other side with grace.

Harper New York : Harper

Ava Sing Lo has been accidentally killing her mother's birds since she was a little girl. Now in her twenties, Ava leaves her native San Diego for the Salton Sea, where she volunteers to help environmental activists save thousands of birds poisoned by agricultural runoff. Helen, her mother, has been haunted by her past for decades. As a young girl in Korea, Helen was drawn into prostitution on a segregated American army base. Several brutal years passed before a young white American soldier married her and brought her to California. When she gave birth to a black baby, her new husband quickly abandoned her, and she was left to fend for herself and her daughter in a foreign country. With great beauty and lyricism, The Book of Dead Birds captures a young woman's struggle to come to terms with her mother's terrible past while she searches for her own place in the world.

Finishing Line Press Georgetown, KY : 2017

Praised by US Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera as "a monumental achievement", The Selfless Bliss of The Body is award-winning novelist Gayle Brandeis' first full-length poetry collection. Poems from the book have been honored by the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Competition and the US Department of the Interior, which installed one of the poems at the Visitor Center in Joshua Tree National Park. These poems reach deeply into the body to reach beyond the body; Fresno Poet Laureate Lee Herrick writes "These tender and fierce poems are breathtaking gifts from a writer whose love for the world knows no bounds."