Description
The people who orbit around Renn Ivins, an actor of Harrison Ford-like stature-his girlfriends, his children, his ex-wives, those on the periphery-long to experience the glow of his flame. Anna and Will are Renn s grown children, struggling to be authentic versions of themselves in a world where they are seen as less-important extensions of their father. They are both drawn to and repelled by the man who overshadows every part of them.
Most of us can imagine the perks of celebrity, but Little Known Facts offers a clear-eyed story of its effects-the fallout of fame and fortune on family members and others who can neither fully embrace nor ignore the superstar in their midst. With Little Known Facts, Christine Sneed emerges as one of the most insightful chroniclers of our celebrity-obsessed age, telling a story of influence and affluence, of forging identity and happiness and a moral compass; the question being, if we could have anything on earth, would we choose correctly?
About the Author
Christine Sneed, winner of the 21st Century Award from the Chicago Public Library Foundation, is the author most recently of Please Be Advised: A Novel in Memos (7.13 Books, 2022), and as editor, the short fiction anthology Love in the Time of Time s Up (Tortoise Books, 2022). Her forthcoming story collection, Direct Sunlight, will be published in June 2023 by Northwestern University Press. Her other books include The Virginity of Famous Men: Stories (Bloomsbury, 2016), winner of the Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year Award, a finalist for Chicago Review of Books 2016 best work of fiction, and one of Booklist s 25 best fiction titles of the year. She is also the author of the novels Paris, He Said (Bloomsbury, 2015), Little Known Facts (Bloomsbury, 2013), and Portraits of a Few of the People I ve Made Cry (stories), a 2009 AWP Grace Paley Prize winner, a finalist for the 2010 Los Angeles Times Book Award (first-fiction category), winner of the 2011 John C. Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares, and 2011 Book of the Year from the Chicago Writers Association (in the traditionally published fiction category). The San Francisco Chronicle also chose Portraits as one of the fifty best fiction books of 2011.
Her second book, Little Known Facts, focuses on a successful Hollywood actor and the effects of his fame on his two ex-wives and his two grown children, especially his son. Little Known Facts won the Society of Midland Authors Award for best work of fiction in 2013, and was named a top ten debut novel by Booklist.
Her third book and second novel, Paris, He Said, is centered on the life and ambitions of a young artist, Jayne Marks, who is in the thrall of a worldly and affluent Frenchman. This novel is set in contemporary Paris and New York City. Paris, He Said was a 2016 Illinois Reads selection and one of Reader Digest UK s 17 literary highlights of 2015.
Sneed s short stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, New England Review, Glimmer Train, Ploughshares, Story, The Southern Review, Glimmer Train, New Ohio Review, Massachusetts Review, Boulevard, and many other journals.
Sneed lives in Pasadena, CA and is the faculty director of the MA/MFA program in creative writing in the School of Professional Studies at Northwestern University. She is also on the faculty of Regis University s low-residency MFA program in Denver.
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