Nina Revoyr
| Nina Revoyr | |
|---|---|
.jpg) |
|
| Born | Japan |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | American |
| Period | 1990s-present |
| Notable works | Southland, Wingshooters |
| Notable awards |
Ferro-Grumley Award (2004) Lambda Literary Award (2004) Indie Booksellers' Choice Award (2011) Midwest Booksellers Choice Award (2011) |
| Website | |
| www |
|
Nina Revoyr is an American novelist and children's advocate, best known for her award-winning 2003 novel Southland. She is also executive vice president and chief operating officer of Children's Institute, Inc., which provides clinical, youth development, family support and early childhood services to children and families affected by trauma, violence and poverty in Central and South Los Angeles.
Born in Japan to a Japanese mother and a Polish American father, she grew up in Tokyo, Wisconsin and Los Angeles. After attending Yale University, she taught English in Japan for two years before returning to the United States, where she took an MFA in creative writing at Cornell University. She published her first novel, The Necessary Hunger, in 1997.
Mostly rooted in Los Angeles, her work is as much about place as it is about people, the communities and inhabitants most often invisible both in fiction and within the city's margins. The novels reflect a complex, multi-ethnic and ever-evolving L.A., with an eye to the connections and tensions that develop in that proximity.
Race, class, historical context, sexual orientation and politics all play an intrinsic part in Revoyr's fiction: "Not because I'm trying to be politically correct but because that is the world as I know it." In a 2014 APA interview she elaborated "By virtue of who the characters are and the situations I put them in, I hope to compel readers to think about issues of race, community, love, family, the things we have in common, and the things that make us different. I hope to complicate and deepen what we think we know about people." In reviewing 2011's "Wingshooters," Booklist spotlighted Revoyr's "unique and affecting exploration of American racism."
While she draws much of her inspiration from urban settings—Watts, Little Tokyo, Hollywood, the Crenshaw District, Glassell Park—Revoyr's work also explores the vastness and unpredictability of the natural world, its power and its restorative possibility. In 2011's "Wingshooters," she sets the novel in motion in rural Wisconsin in the 1970s, while looking at race, class and family in the context of small-town attitudes. And while "Lost Canyon's" protagonists are situated in disparate neighborhoods across greater Los Angeles, the Sierra becomes the challenging backdrop thorough which they move.
Several of Revoyr's books (including "Southland," "Wingshooters," and "The Age of Dreaming") are taught and/or frequently used as part of community read programs. "Southland," in particular, is taught in many colleges in courses about Los Angeles or California history or literature.
...
Wikipedia