Cris Mazza delivers a spirited rebuttal to pop-culture stereotypes about growing up female in Southern California. Coming of age in the 1970s and '80s, Mazza's memories aren't about surfing, cheerleading or riding in convertibles. Though her story has its exotic elements—her family hunts and gathers food in the semi-arid coastal hills well into the early '70s—she sets herself in the context of familiar Americana. Repeating motifs—gender issues, the California landscape, dogs, musicians, plus the perplexing melancholy of a sexless marriage—thread through these very personal essays, as Mazza confronts madness, disability, sexual dysfunction and death, speaking to the drama of ordinary lives.

Indigenous: Growing up Californian

Biographies & Memoirs

MAZZA, CRIS

Arts & Literature

City Lights Publishers

A PEN/Nelson Algren award winner, this intensely absorbing first novel of an artist told by his lover questions accepted notions of love, reality, and imagination. "A portrait of the artist as a young man in our times. Highly recommended."--Library Journal "Engaging and innovative."--Publishers Weekly

How to Leave a Country

Literature & Fiction

Humor & Satire

Coffee House Press

Animal Acts

In a striking first collection of stories, Cris Mazza brings a startling vision to the familiar terrain of intimate relationships. The eleven stories in Animal Acts describe characters navigating an unsteady course through the turbulence of sexial desire. Set in unmistakably American landscapes—from sprawling West Coast cities to the dry, dusty scrub of rural Southern California—the work is populated by gym teachers, aging flower children, secretaries and artists—most of them strong, willful women. 
The narrator of the title story holds the guests at a party spellbound with her fantastic retelling of another woman's perverse life—which may, in fact, be her own—thereby seducing a man who has previousley eluded her. 
Mazza's arresting narrative structures and sharp sense of the absurd make for a dazzling debut collection.

United States

Fiction Collective 2

In a striking first collection of stories, Cris Mazza brings a startling vision to the familiar terrain of intimate relationships. The eleven stories in Animal Acts describe characters navigating an unsteady course through the turbulence of sexial desire. Set in unmistakably American landscapes--from sprawling West Coast cities to the dry, dusty scrub of rural Southern California--the work is populated by gym teachers, aging flower children, secretaries and artists--most of them strong, willful women. The narrator of the title story holds the guests at a party spellbound with her fantastic retelling of another woman's perverse life--which may, in fact, be her own--thereby seducing a man who has previousley eluded her. Mazza's arresting narrative structures and sharp sense of the absurd make for a dazzling debut collection.

While in many ways reaffirming the mythic dimension of being on the road romanticized in American pop and fold culture, Revelation Countdown also subtly undermines that view. These stories project onto the open road not the nirvana of personal freedom, but rather a type of freedom more closely resembling loss of control. Being in constant motion and passing through new environments destabilizes life, casts it out of phase, heightens perception, and skews reactions. Every little problem is magnified to overwhelming dimension. Events segue from slow motion to fast forward. Background noises intrude, causing perpetual wee hour insomnia. Imagination flourishes, often as an enemy. People suddenly discover that they never really understood their travel companions. The formerly stable line of their lives veers off course. In such an atmosphere, the title Revelation Countdown, borrowed from a roadside sign in Tennessee, proves prophetic. It may not arrive at 7:30, but revelation will inevitably find the traveler.

Revelation Countdown (Black Ice Books) (Studies in Monasticism)

Fiction Collective Two

Fiction. In the 80's a young woman advertises her services as a model to photographers; she discovers their weaknesses, seduces them, then extorts them by claiming to be under-age. In the 90's a 40-something man is married to a doctor who only views him as a sex object. In these two reversals of sexual harassment and gender-inferiority, Mazza explores such issues asthe lnaguage of bodies, sexual desirability, latent adolescence, plus whatever the genders share...and what they can never share.

Many Ways To Get It, Many Ways To Say It

Chiasmus Press

Hester Smith is a woman who always played life near the sidelines—until she decides to rescue a teenage Mexican prostitute. She's up against the border sex trade in Southern California that works like a drug cartel, where the smuggled contraband is teenage girls forced to work as prostitutes in undeveloped canyons just outside suburbia. Law enforcement agencies know it happens, as do investigative journalists, yet the illegal sex trade continues to exist. Most people, comfortable in their homes only miles away, express some brand of shock in the moment they hear about it-and then they go on with their lives, assured there's nothing they can do. While she prepares for the rescue, Hester discovers that the man with whom she almost had an affair-her mentor when she was a 23 year-old student teacher-had been simultaneously having a sexual relationship with a 16 year-old student. Hester mines her own memories of the would-be affair and ultimately tracks down the former 16 year-old. When these two women with a shared scandal in their pasts confront one another, the meeting coincides with the last step necessary to rescue the teenage prostitute Hester has tried to protect.

Various Men Who Knew Us as Girls

Emergency Press

Would her life have been better if she’d had sex with her supervisor when she was 23? Hester Smith is a woman who always played life near the sidelinesuntil she decides to rescue a teenage Mexican prostitute. She’s up against the border sex trade in Southern California that works like a drug cartel, where the smuggled contraband is teenage girls forced to work as prostitutes in undeveloped canyons just outside suburbia. Law enforcement agencies know it happens, as do investigative journalists, yet the illegal sex trade continues to exist. While she prepares for the rescue, Hester discovers that the man with whom she almost had an affairher mentor when she was a 23-year-old student teacherhad been simultaneously having a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old student. Hester mines her own memories of the would-be affair and ultimately tracks down the former 16-year-old. When these two women with a shared scandal in their pasts confront one another, the meeting coincides with the last step necessary to rescue the teenage prostitute Hester has tried to protect. It is only this mayhem that allows Hester to finally take ownership of her decisions and regrets.

Literary

"Eclectic selection of work from both emerging and established writers...." (The Washington Post), Eckleburg is a collection of stories, poetry, translations, and artwork by award-winning and emerging talents such as Rick Moody, Stephen Dixon, Cris Mazza, and Eckleburg's 2013 Gertrude Stein Award in Fiction winner, Jill Birdsall. Eckleburg No. 18 is a textual and graphic innovation for both the traditionalists and nonconformists.

The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review No. 18

MOODY, RICK

Contemporary

The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review

In the era just before computers, at the dawn of ''safe sex,'' for a sub - generation of people who came of age without a war in Vietnam to unite them, the stories in Trickle - Down Timeline are glimpses into individual lives subtly influenced by the political and social milieu of the 1980's. For some people, the surplus and glut of the 80's were part of some other world, not theirs; and it couldn't be a ''me - generation'' if they didn't know who they were or where they were going. They were often just finding out what they were going to want; or they were, in starting out, already where they were going to end up.

Trickle-Down Timeline

ReadHowYouWant

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by MAZZA, CRIS. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by MAZZA, CRIS

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by MAZZA, CRIS. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Indigenous: Growing up Californian

How to Leave a Country

Animal Acts

Animal Acts

Revelation Countdown (Black Ice Books) (Studies in Monasticism)

Many Ways To Get It, Many Ways To Say It

Various Men Who Knew Us as Girls

Various Men Who Knew Us as Girls

The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review No. 18

Trickle-Down Timeline