A uniquely styled memoir that blends fiction and nonfiction to illuminate the love, faith, and artistry of two American writers.
In December 1998, novelist Oscar Hijuelos and writer/editor Lori Marie Carlson were married in the Riverside Church in New York City. One love story, one Pulitzer Prize, and one untimely death later, Lori is left to unveil the creativity and faith that were at the center of their marriage.
In a narrative of recollections inspired by the setting of a Lutheran cathedral library, Lori delves into the archaeology of their union. Her memories are coupled with excerpts from Oscar’s unpublished opus, Blue Antiquity, which he was writing at the time of his passing in 2013. Blue Antiquity is Oscar’s distillation of a lifetime of pondering human passion, familial love, personal identity, death, and eternity.
A Writing Marriage is a literary one-off in style and story that memorializes down-to-earth love and its endurance set against a background of bright lights and certain blessings.
Lori Carlson-Hijuelos is a native of New York State. Born in Jamestown, New York, she received her collegiate education in Ohio and Indiana. Following graduate school, she took an editorial position at the Center for Inter-American Relations, now known as The Americas Society in New York City. There, in 1981, she met her future husband, Oscar Hijuelos, the first Latino to win a Pulitzer Prize in fiction. She began writing full time in 1990, publishing her first book for children, Where Angels Glide at Dawn, with Harper & Row. Among her best-known work is the bilingual poetry anthology Cool Salsa, which is now considered a classic by the American Library Association. Her just-released memoir, A Writing Marriage, celebrates her late husband’s remarkable novels, and their beautiful life together, which was bound by true love, faith, and literature
Carlson-Hijuelos will be in conversation with Nora Krug, a writer and editor based in Washington, DC. For nearly two decades she worked at The Washington Post, primarily as an editor in Book World. Prior to that she was an editor at The New York Times, Architectural Digest and Little, Brown.