Photo by Beowulf Sheehan
Jill Eisenstadt returns to her native Rockaway, Queens to expose a time, a town, and a family at their most vulnerable. Here, the Glassmans believe they’ve found refuge from post 9/11 Tribeca until ninety-year-old murderer Rose appears to reclaim their beach house. Swell examines the lengths people go — hilariously and tragically — just to feel safe. Learn more…
NOW in PAPERBACK
“…Rockaway Beach is granted the sort of soulful reflection that knocks you flat…” — Boris Fishman, New York Times Book Review
“In this touching portrait of ordinary people grappling with the aftershocks of 9/11—memorials, uncertainty, death, and a new life—the emotional upheaval of a national tragedy leaves no one unaffected.” — Publishers Weekly
“With a pitch-perfect narrative voice and plenty of humor, Eisenstadt captures the lives of her Mets-loving and Yankee-hating characters in vivid detail.” — Mark Levine, Booklist
Timmy and Chowderhead and Peg are lifeguards. They spend summers sitting in those tall chairs, smoking dope and staring at the waves, swatting insects, tormenting seagulls. Winters they work shit jobs like unloading trucks at Mickey’s Deli. At night, winter and summer, they drink. Drink and get rowdy. Then there’s Alex, the girl who gets away, not only from old boyfriend Timmy but also from “Rotaway”-on scholarship to a rich-kid’s college in New England. One midsummer night when the four are reunited, tensions erupt in feats of daring and self-destruction during the wild, cathartic, near-sacred lifeguard ritual known as the Death Keg. From Rockaway was sold to five countries and translated into four languages and has now been reissued! Learn more…
Jill Eisenstadt is the author of the novels From Rockaway, Kiss Out and Swell and with her sister, director Debra Eisenstadt, the co-writer and co-producer of the feature film, The Limbo Room. Other work has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, New York Magazine, Vogue, Elle, The Boston Review, Queens Noir and the Best of the New York Times City Section. Jill has taught at the Bennington College July Programs, through Teachers & Writers Collaborative and at Eugene Lang, The New School and was an editor at BKLYN magazine. She is the recipient of a Columbia University Writing Fellowship, a National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts Teacher Award and a National Endowment for the Arts Fiction Grant. She lives in Brooklyn. Learn more…
Photo by Coco Drinkard
Contact Jill to learn more about working with her.
