Kiara Brinkman
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
writer born in Omaha, Nebraska
Omaha, Nebraska
Omaha is the largest city in the state of Nebraska, United States, and is the county seat of Douglas County. It is located in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about 20 miles north of the mouth of the Platte River...
now living in San Francisco, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. Her 2007 novel, Up High in the Trees, was published by Grove Press
Grove Press
Grove Press is an American publishing imprint that was founded in 1951. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, Zebra. Barney Rosset purchased the company in 1951 and turned it into an alternative book press in the United States. The Atlantic Monthly Press, under the aegis of its...
and was widely reviewed. Brinkman has also authored several short stories. Her work has appeared in One Story
One Story
One Story is a literary magazine which publishes 18 issues a year, each issue containing a single short story. The magazine was founded in 2002 by writers Hannah Tinti and Maribeth Batcha...
, Pinelboyz, Failbetter
Failbetter
failbetter is a quarterly online literary magazine.-Founding:Founded in 2000 by Thom Didato and David McLendon, the magazine originally evolved from a Brooklyn-based reading series that featured many writers from the Gordon Lish school of writing. McLendon left failbetter in 2003 to pursue his own...
and elsewhere. Her contribution to McSweeney’s, "Counting Underwater," was named one of the 100 Other Distinguished Stories of 2005 in The Best American Short Stories 2006.
Biography
Brinkman graduated from Brown UniversityBrown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
and earned an MFA from Goddard College
Goddard College
Goddard College is a private, liberal arts college located in Plainfield, Vermont, offering undergraduate and graduate degree programs. Goddard College currently operates on an intensive low-residency model...
. Recently, Brinkman has worked with children as a teacher and tutor, and has led workshops at Mills College
Mills College
Mills College is an independent liberal arts women's college founded in 1852 that offers bachelor's degrees to women and graduate degrees and certificates to women and men. Located in Oakland, California, Mills was the first women's college west of the Rockies. The institution was initially founded...
and 826 Valencia (a youth arts center in San Francisco). Brinkman is currently employed part-time at the Booksmith
Booksmith
Founded in October 1976, The Booksmith is an independent bookstore located in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. When first opened, the store was located at 1746 Haight Street, below the former I-Beam nightclub. In 1985, the store moved to its current location at 1644 Haight Street...
, an independent bookstore
Independent bookstore
An independent bookstore is a retail bookstore which is independently owned.-Literary and countercultural history:Author events at independent bookstores sometimes take the role of literary salons. The bookstores themselves, "have historically supported and cultivated the work of independent...
located in San Francisco.
Upon its release in 2007, Up High in the Trees earned positive reviews in the Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune (where it was named one of the newspaper’s "Favorite Books of 2007"). Writing in the New York Times, novelist Madison Smartt Bell
Madison Smartt Bell
Madison Smartt Bell is an American novelist. He was raised Nashville, and lived in New York, and London before settling in Baltimore, Maryland....
noted, "Like Faulkner’s Benjy from The Sound and the Fury, Sebastian is most unusual for the lyrical intensity of his inner life, and the strongest impression this fine debut leaves is his nicely achieved voice, which is moving without being precious." The book also received praised from writers Cristina Garcia
Cristina García
Cristina García is a Cuban-born American journalist and novelist. After working for Time Magazine as a researcher, reporter, and Miami bureau chief, she turned to writing fiction. Her first novel, Dreaming in Cuban , received critical acclaim and was a finalist for the National Book Award...
, Maud Casey, and Dave Eggers
Dave Eggers
Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He is known for the best-selling memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and for his more recent work as a screenwriter. He is also the co-founder of the literacy project 826 Valencia.-Life:Eggers was born in Boston, Massachusetts,...
.
Up High in the Trees was released in softcover in the summer of 2008.