by Jane McDermott, winner of the 2014 MRBA

 

"...Look Busy serves up a series of micro-stories that exist somewhere between the whimsical and the jaded—as though the plays of Sarah Ruhl had swallowed the stories of Lydia Davis. McDermott's prose is sharp, funny and poignant. Most important, the writing rings with honesty and vulnerability… amusing and clever on the first reading, charming and poignant on the second reading, and thoroughly captivating on the third reading and beyond."

-- Laura Walker, author of rimertown/ an atlas

 

Jane McDermott was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts. She has a BFA in filmmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute, had a nearly thirty-year career in marketing/marketing communications, and is a MFA candidate in creative writing at San Francisco State University. Her work has appeared in the anthologies How Running Changed My Life: True Stories of the Power of Running (Breakaway Books, NY, 2002) and Knit Lit the Third: We Spin More Yarns (Three Rivers Press, NY, 2005), as well as the journals The Rambler, Reunion: The Dallas Review, and SFSU’s own Transfer Magazine. She has been a featured reader at Writing without Walls, The Hazel Reading Series, Bay Area Generations, and Beast Crawl. This is her first book.

 

Jane lives in Oakland, California, with her wife and assorted cats, chickens, and bees. She tries to find time to be grateful every day.

​