Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of the novels BEAUTYLAND, PARAKEET (New York Times Editors’ Choice) and 2 A.M. AT THE CAT’S PAJAMAS (NPR Best Books 2014), and the story collection SAFE AS HOUSES (Iowa Short Fiction Award).
Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Electric Literature, Tin House, McSweeneys, Granta, BOMB, Guernica, and many others. Honors include The Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellowship in Cork, Ireland, The O. Henry Prize, The Pushcart Prize, fellowships from MacDowell, Hedgebrook Writers Colony, The Center For Fiction NYC, and Sewanee Writers Conference. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Pen/ O. Henry Prize Stories, and Mississippi Review 30, and has twice been featured on NPR’s “Selected Shorts” program. She taught for many years in the Creative Writing programs of NYU, The New School, and Institute for American Indian Arts. She is currently the Ritvo-Slifka Writer-in-Residence at Yale University.
She has worked as a biographer for people living with Traumatic Brain Injury. She has completed a certificate program for end-of-life facilitation.
In Philadelphia, she sang in a band named after a Jimmy Stewart movie. In New York, she was a music writer for The Deli Magazine, and once attended/ reviewed 26 rock shows in 4 days.
She thinks you can tell a lot about people from print interviews and also by knowing them.
This is her story about Bob Dylan, recommended by Jim Shepard.
Once while playing volleyball she went chasing after the ball, fell down a hill, and crashed into a beehive. She was stung multiple times but finished the game. For her perseverance she was awarded Camper of The Year. This was at leadership camp, where they teach you to get ten people from one end of a field to another without touching the ground using only a chair and a 2×4.
She keeps thinking about what Rebecca said, There is nothing a woman can go through that can’t be beautiful.
On a grade school softball team, her nickname was “Peanut.”
Many of her art heroes are film directors and musicians and comedians and women and one is her Mom.
She misses Adina. She’s getting older and feels farther away from childhood than ever, though she has kept all of her childhood desires at the center of her life. She thinks you look great today.
