Manhatten by Sarah Rosenthal

This is not the mythic Manhattan of bright lights and glitz. It is called Manhatten and it is
wonderfully out of kilter. In this mixed-genre book (fiction, poetry, review), Sarah Rosenthal l
ayers headlong, voice-driven prose with silent, otherly poems to tell a story of an island
where relationships are disturbed yet meaningful and luminous. Juliana Spahr

Proudly misspelled, Manhatten chronicles the adventures of a young woman
as she searches for her life story in the ultimate American metropolis. The heroine--
who may or may not be author Sarah Rosenthal--leads the reader into one scene
after another filled with family, friends, chance acquaintances, exes, and current love
interests, where relationships and geography intertwine and memories collect on every
street corner. As keen and insistent as the city it describes, this writing attains a clarity
fueled by hunger for insight and language's tonal responsiveness. Spanning two coasts,
leaping whole decades in a single clause, Manhatten documents the rush of events and
the meditative spaces between, negotiating a life complete with all its enchantments,
illusions, intersections, and collisions.    Pamela Lu

I like Sarah Rosenthal's Manhatten because it's generous with self. Also alarmingly well written. And
best of all, Manhatten awkwardly and beautifully makes the claim that  heterosexuals are
human too!   Eileen Myles

Sarah Rosenthal

Sarah Rosenthal grew up in Chicago and lives in San Francisco. She is the author of three
chapbooks: How I Wrote This Story (Margin to Margin, 2001), sitings (a+bend, 2000) and
not-chicago (Melodeon Poetry Systems, 1998). Her poetry and fiction have appeared in
numerous journals and have been anthologized in Bay Poetics (Faux Press, 2006) and
hinge (Crack Press, 2002). She has taught creative writing at Santa Clara University and
San Francisco State University. She has edited a collection of interviews entitled A Community
Writing Itself: Conversations with Vanguard Writers of the Bay Area. She is the recipient of the
Leo Litwak Award for Fiction and grant-supported writing residencies at the Vermont
Studio Center and the Ragdale Foundation.