Chautauqua Summer (memoir), and June Sparrow and the Million Dollar Penny (children's book). Her third play, Obit, will premiere in September 2026 at Theater for the New City (NYC). A regular contributor to The New York Times, her nonfiction essays have appeared in The Yale Review, New England Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and other publications. Her fellowships include Civitella Ranieri, MacDowell, Yaddo, Dora Maar House, American Academy of Rome (Visiting Artist), among others. She is a Faculty Associate at Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking.
At Electric Lit Chace tagged seven books that "explore the complicated, private heartbreak of losing a friend." One title on the list:
Ponti by Sharlene TeoRead about the other entries on the list.
This novel is haunted by a glamorous mother who became a B-movie horror film star. What a great premise! The story is told from three points of view: themother, her insecure, adolescent daughter, Szu—a social outcast at her school in Singapore—and Circe, the classmate who appears to be a fellow outcast despite her wealth and beauty. Szu’s distant, cruel mother and her Auntie now scrape by as mediums (though their psychic gifts are questionable, according to Szu). Circe becomes Szu’s “best friend” for better and worse. The novel has a gothic horror sensibility that echoes the campy film that made Szu’s mother famous, but the teenage friendship, with its complex cocktail of loyalty and betrayal, is utterly real.
--Marshal Zeringue
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