Love, Loosha: The Letters of Lucia Berlin and Kenward Elmslie

Lucia Berlin · Elmslie Kenward

Nov 2022 · University of New Mexico Press

About this ebook

At the time of her death in 2004, Lucia Berlin was known as a brilliant writer of short stories, beloved by other writers but never achieving wide readership or acclaim. That changed in 2015 with the publication of A Manual for Cleaning Women, a collection of some of her best work. Almost overnight, Lucia Berlin became an international bestseller.

Love, Loosha is the extraordinary collection of letters between Lucia Berlin and her dear friend, the poet and Broadway lyricist Kenward Elmslie. Written between 1994 and 2004, their correspondence reveals the lives, work, and literary obsessions of two great American writers. Berlin and Elmslie discuss publishing and social trends, political correctness, and offending others and being offended. They gossip. They dish. They entertain.

Love, Loosha is an intimate conversation between two friends—one in which we are invited to participate, and one that will give fans of Lucia Berlin and Kenward Elmslie much pleasure and fresh insight into their lives and work.

About the author

Chip Livingston is the author of five books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction and is a professor of creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He is a former fiction student and close friend of Lucia Berlin, and, upon Lucia’s introduction and suggestion, he became Kenward Elmslie’s personal assistant for ten years.

Lucia Berlin was the author of several short-story collections. In 2015 A Manual for Cleaning Women was published posthumously and became both a New York Times and an international bestseller. In 2018 Evening in Paradise, a second collection of her remaining stories, and Welcome Home, a memoir with letters, were also published to wide acclaim in the US and abroad.

Kenward Elmslie was a member of the New York School of poetry, having written fifteen books of poems, several plays, and a novel as well as opera librettos and the books and lyrics for Broadway and off-Broadway musicals. The grandson of Joseph Pulitzer, he founded the nonprofit small press and foundation Z Press, through which he provided professional and financial support for writers and artists.