WRITING WHILE FEMALE: WOMEN’S FICTION, CHICK LIT, AND OTHER MISDEMEANORS WITH TERI EMORY AND HEIDI MASTROGIOVANNI

The novelists Teri Emory (Second Acts) and Heidi Mastrogiovanni (Lala Pettibone’s Act Two) have between them well over a century’s life experience, and they’ve got tales to tell. Come hear them discuss how they’ve managed to support their writing habits over many years, how they handle the ageless scourge of rejection, how they create female characters who resemble actual women, how they published debut novels in the seventh decade of life, and how they view “chick lit,” “women’s fiction,” and other labels. (Spoiler alert on the labels: Teri and Heidi are not thrilled about them.)

Lala Pettibone's Act Two (Amberjack Publishing)

Lala Pettibone, a forty-something widow whose outrageous antics befit women half her age, has been imagining her sexy boss Gerard is as smitten with her as she is with him. Enter Gerard’s fabulous girlfriend from Paris. After spending the rest of the day drinking wines straight from the bottle, Lala attends the monthly meeting of her Greenwich Village co-op, where the residents are informed that a toxic wasteland in the building’s basement requires everyone to pony up forty-grand by the end of the week.

Lala very reluctantly decides to sublet her apartment and make a bundle while visiting her Auntie Geraldine in Los Angeles. But good things come her way in sunny California, including inspiration to finish writing an uproarious novel based on her own ridiculous adventures. 

Lala Pettibone's Act Two is a wonderfully hilarious, second-coming-of-age-novel. Bridget Jones has absolutely nothing on Lala in the Late-Bloomer-With-Maybe-Lots-of-Potential-Department.

Heidi Mastrogiovanni is a dedicated animal welfare advocate who lives in Los Angeles with her musician husband and their three rescued senior dogs. She loves to read, hike, travel, and do a classic spit-take whenever something is really funny. Heidi is a graduate of Wesleyan University and was chosen as one of ScreenwritingU’s 15 Most Recommended Screenwriters of 2013. The comedy web series she writes and produces, Verdene and Gleneda, was awarded the Hotspot on the Writers Guild of America’s Hotlist.

Second Acts (Amberjack Publishing)

An unshakable friendship among three women takes root in a college dorm in the late 1960s. Fueled by the bravado of that era, the three women charge into adulthood with lofty ideas and high expectations.

Throughout the decades that follow, they share their joys and shepherd each other through heartache. In the year leading up to 9/11, they are forced to confront hard truths about themselves and the choices they have made over time. They must dispel past regrets and make peace with present circumstances as they begin the second acts of their lives, sustained as always by their abiding friendship.

Teri Emory is living proof that a liberal arts education does not necessarily make a person unemployable. As evidence: She has taught at the University of North Florida, Hunter College, Yeshiva University, and Fordham University and survived a fifteen-year tour of duty as a corporate writer. Her articles and poems have appeared in print and online publications, and she has edited essays and book-length manuscripts on absurdly esoteric topics. Teri was born in the Bronx and grew up in and around New York City. She is proud to have been educated entirely in public schools, from kindergarten at P.S. 77 to graduate school at U.C. Berkeley. She has lived and worked in Manhattan, Berkeley, Jacksonville, Philadelphia, and Rome. A devoted mother and besotted grandmother, she now resides in Las Vegas, married to a man whom she re-met, after almost forty years, at her high school reunion.