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Come to
these events with authors Fay Jacobs & Stefani Deoul
Panel
discussions, readings and signings at the Writers at the Beach Conference
March 26-28, Atlantic Sands Hotel, Rehoboth Beach
Publication Party & Book Signing - Saturday, April
10
11:45am- 1:45 p.m. CAMP Rehoboth Community Center, Rehoboth Beach
Discussions and appearances at Saints & Sinners
GLBT Literary Conference
May 15-18, Bourbon Orleans Hotel, New Orleans, La
Appearances
and readings on June 2-3 in Orlando, FL
Girls at Disney Gay Days
The Golden Crown Literary Society Conference, June
*********
The Carousel by Stefani Deoul
advanced praise for The Carousel:
“It’s not only the story itself—of finding beauty and belonging in the
places—and people—where one least expects it, that makes The Carousel linger in the reader’s mind
long after the last page is turned. It’s the writing -the gorgeous,
heartbreaking, lyrical writing. If I hadn’t been so caught up in the story, I
would have stopped—again and again --just to reread the resonant, detailed,
surprising, and beautiful paragraphs.
Maribeth Fischer,
author of The Life You Longed For
Reviews
& News for Fried & True -Tales
from Rehoboth Beach
Winner!
Book of the Year,
Non-Fiction - Humor
2008 National Federation of Press Women
Winner! Book
of the Year - Non-fiction, Humor
2008 Delaware Press Association
Winner 2008 Golden
Crown Literary Society Award - best non-fiction!
From
Lambda Book Report:
by Jane van Ingen
"Her
columns... are laugh out loud funny and the best part is that Jacobs is
sincere...those who enjoyed Jacobs' first collection will not be disappointed
and those reading her for the first time will understand why she's such a
beloved columnist."
From Chicago's
Windy City Times:
by Marie Kuda
This year, with the crudities of consumerism blowing at our doors and election
hype rattling our windows, what we really need is a good gay belly laugh to dump
the detritus and restore cheer. Fay Jacobs, longtime chronicler of goings-on in
Rehoboth
Beach
,
Del.
,
published a new collection of her short pieces this year. Fried and True (
A&M Books, 2007, $17.00 ) succeeds her gut-busting As I Lay Frying ( 2004,
$15 ) , still in print. Partner and I read the dozens of short pieces in
Jacobs’ first book to each other, often laughing so hard we couldn’t read
further through cathartic tears. The older entrenched gay and lesbian colony on
Rehoboth has been adapting to the onslaught of the new wave of summer queers for
the last few decades; Jacobs chronicles the foibles and fun of daily life among
the bars, bodies and sandy beaches. Her essays, while often reflecting the
self-effacing humor we have long treasured in our community, can also be
poignant and thoughtful. Reflections on lesbian square dances or Roy Rogers hold
equal sway with recollections of Anyda Marchant and Muriel Crawford, founders of
Naiad Press ( Marchant wrote novels as Sarah Aldridge ) , Jacobs’ mentors, and
long-time doyennes of the Rehoboth summer colony. Partner has ordered 10 copies
of each to give our friends laughter for the holidays.
Q. Syndicate
by Richard
LaBonte,
This second
collection of newspaper columns and other jottings from Jacobs
is every bit as sardonic, witty, sarcastic, and insightful as her first
book, As I Lay Frying. With this difference: a thread of melancholy runs
through it. Many of the otherwise chortle-inducing essays center on the
lives of lesbian publishing pioneers Anyda Merchant - who wrote 14 novels as
Sarah Aldridge - and her partner, Muriel Crawford, cofounders with Barbara
Grier of Naiad Press. The couple, who died within months of each other, were by the time Jacobs met them the beloved (if occasionally imperious) grand
dames of
Rehoboth
Beach
, running A&M Books -
which Jacobs inherited - out of their home. Fried & True is peppered
with columns about their lifelong
love, their vibrant weekly salons, their declining health, and their passing
- adding up to a moving mini-biography of two genuine lesbian heroes. The
mood lightens when Jacobs brings her easy comic touch to the everyday
travails and foibles of life in a small (and quite queer) resort town, but
her memories of Marchant and Crawford
give this book extra heart.
Insightout
Books - Doubleday Book club
FFay
Jacobs’ memoir As I Lay Frying: A Rehoboth Beach Memoir kept us in
stitches and gave us the giggles. Now she takes us back to the Delaware
resort town that she calls home, recounting her close friendship with couple
Sarah Aldridge and Muriel Crawford. She keeps the laughs coming with her
entertaining slices of life in Rehoboth.
From
provocative to political, from heartwarming to hilarious, Fay’s written voice
invites readers in as friends, and she once again introduces us to the unique
inhabitants of
Rehoboth
Beach
. Much of the focus this time is on her close friendship with two of the most
famous locals, couple Sarah Aldridge and Muriel Crawford, whom Fay credits for
helping her become an “accidental publisher.”
Aldridge is the writer of 14 classic
novels, and with her partner, Muriel, founded The Naiad Press, the first and
most successful feminist publishing house in the country in the ’70s and
’80s. As Fay recounts her friendship with the two women, we get incredible
glimpses into the history of lesbian publishing. And, of course, we are
entertained by anecdotes and tales of the daily travails of life in
Rehoboth
Beach
.
Reviewed by Anna Furtado, JustAboutWrite.com
Fried and True is a delightful second offering by Fay
Jacobs. Fay is the publisher at A&M Books of Rehoboth Beach, a position she
inherited from the legendary founders Anyda Marchant (Sarah Aldridge) and her
partner, Muriel Crawford. The book spans the timeframe between September 2003
and December 2006.
Filled with the antics in and around
Rehoboth
Beach
, many of these stories are from Jacobs’ regular local column
called "Letters from
CAMP
Rehoboth
." "Letters" is filled with both hilarious and
thought provoking insights that are thoroughly entertaining. Interwoven with
her columns is the poignant tale of the women who left a publishing and
literary legacy behind.
Jacobs is a master of humor. Descriptions of her forays
into women’s golf are truly comical, as are her Schnauzer stories, primarily
about her own two boys, Moxie and Paddy. As she gives us her perspective on
health care issues, sharing with us her own search for HMO Heaven, the reader
may find herself smiling at the humor, but also nodding at the irony of the
situation we all find ourselves in these days. Reflections on politics and the
right wing gay agenda (don’t they have anything better to do—what with a war
on and all) will strike the reader similarly. Not afraid to reveal her own
vulnerabilities for a good laugh, Fay tells the story of a haphazard fall and
her broken nose. Don’t miss the sidesplitting story of Jacobs’ experience at
the fund-raiser atop a very high lifeguard chair. And then, there’s Mary
(“Traitor”) Cheney—but don’t get Fay started. Each chapter is a new
adventure that either tickles your funny bone to the marrow or allows you to
feel the sadness and loss of two great ladies from
Rehoboth
Beach
, Anyda Marchant and Muriel Crawford, Jacobs’ mentors and role
models.
In Fried and True, Jacobs takes us from
laugh-out-loud-moments with her marvelous sense of humor to misty-eyed moments
as she tells us about her relationship with Marchant and Crawford—and their
relationship to each other and their friends. The emotions portrayed in these
stories run the gamut. Every tale is masterfully told—this memorable memoir is
both pleasure and treasure.
Reviews
for Fay Jacobs & As I Lay Frying
"Based
on author Fay Jacob’s hilarious dispatches from her lesbian life, all of which
appeared in Rehoboth Beach’s local newspaper, As I Lay Frying is
a treasure of a lesbian memoir is funny, touching—and real.
This is a true laugh riot, as Fay wittily takes on sexuality, politics,
relationships, and day-to-day dilemmas." - InsightOUT Book
Club
From OUT
Traveler, January 2005:
When Washington, D.C., journalist Fay Jacobs and her partner, Bonnie Quesenberry,
cruised in to Rehoboth Beach, Del., on their 27-foot motorboat, they never
imagined they'd eventually transition from regular visitors to seasoned locals.
Fay's unvarnished essays resonate with warmth, candid humor, and the unabashed
joy of finding one's place in "a huge slice of lesbiandom."
Hail the conquering weekender!
As
I Lay Frying— by Emily Lloyd, Lambda Book Report, May 2005
BUY
FAY’S BOOK! As I Lay Frying comprises
her wonderful 1995-2003 columns for Letters
from CAMP Rehoboth, recounting the adventures of Fay, her partner Bonnie,
their dogs, and their friends. I
haven’t met a more compelling cast of characters since reading the “Little
House” books when I was eight.
I’ve
caught Fay’s columns on and off over the years.
They’re perfect as discrete pieces, as Fay has the good stand-up
comic’s flare for coming full circle—wrapping everything up neatly and
getting one last joke in before saying “Good night.”
They become a thing of power, though, when arranged back-to-back in book
form. You get a sense of the
passage of seasons, illnesses (and home improvement projects) suffered and moved
on from, growth happening…whether it be the growth of a person coming further
and further “out,” the growth of a family expanding to include new members
(schnauzers, mainly), the growth of a country passing through Y2K, Election
Heist 2000, 9/11, and war in Iraq, then bumping up against gay marriage…or the
growth on Fay’s middle finger (don’t ask; just read).
Fay’s
a funny girl and a smarty pants, and
something else: a generous writer. I love a lot of humor columnists, but there’s something
different about Fay—you never get the sense that she sat down to write with
the sole purpose of being funny.
She’s also different from most memoirists, in that her tone never
suggests self-importance or “Look at Me!”-ness.
When’s the last time you read a memoir and thought of the writer as
“generous” for letting you in on his or her life?
With its 3-4
page segments, As I Lay Frying is
great for beach, bed, or bathroom readers, ... Of
course, it’s also good for people who like to plow right through a book (I’m
one of ’em), but my point is: even if you’re not a “big” reader,
you’ll dig this book.
Suckers
for a great turn of phrase (again, I’m one of ’em) will get giddy just
flipping through As I Lay Frying.
Fay’s worth reading for her similes alone: a computer freezes up like
“a lesbian in a roomful of Promise Keepers”; an animal rescue lady’s small
car is “packed, like a Rubik’s Cube, with a dozen cages.”
And though her essays will inevitably be referred to in Friends-episode
format (The One About the Scrapple Bust; The One About the Pair of Dykes), Fay
writes great titles, including “My Life as Ballast,” “Counting Blessings
Instead of Sheep,” and, for the column covering her and Bonnie’s wedding,
the jubilant and moving “We Did, We Did.”
All
this Book Review Hoo-ha, though, is less important than what I really want to
say about Fay’s book. It made me
happy. I think it will you, too.
************************************************************
Washington Blade, Friday,
September 03, 2004
When she decided to move to
Rehoboth Beach, Del., full time in 1999, it was a huge decision for her and
Bonnie, her partner of 22 years. “As I Lay Frying: A Rehoboth Beach Memoir,”
Jacobs’ most recent literary effort, proves this was the right decision,
though it involved a fair share of consequences that she eloquently recounts in
the book.
“As I Lay Frying” is
comprised of nearly 10 years worth of essays written by Jacobs for the Letters
from CAMP Rehoboth magazine. CAMP Rehoboth is an acronym for “create a
more positive Rehoboth.” And in each story, her beach adventures come alive.
At first there were just long
weekend visits, stretching out the time spent by arriving on Thursday nights and
waiting until the crack of dawn Monday to leave. Then Fay and Bonnie’s stays
became more frequent. They were so frequent, in fact, that the couple decided it
would be more economical to buy a house, rent it out when they weren’t there,
thus allowing them to spend more time at the beach.
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