Ruth Bonapace

I've long felt that many of our best writers found their groove in life experiences far outside the womb of fancy universities. Walt Whitman was a poet who ran a business - a newspaper. Mark Twain was a riverboat pilot. Octavia Butler wrote pre-dawn before heading off to jobs like telemarketer and potato chip inspector. Winston Churchill wrote 43 books and won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Life informs art and the artist creates from the raw materials.

I draw heavily on my own lived experience whether I'm writing memoir or wild flights of fancy in fiction. The hilarity and heartbreak of my Italian American family -- my dad sharpened knives for a living -- my stints as a laundromat manager (yes, I can fix the change machine), as an ok real estate broker and damn good mortgage banker, and years working for newspapers and magazines. Oh yes, I have an MFA in creative writing and literature. Learning craft is important, but for me, writing can't be brought forth in a bubble. Everything counts. Everything.

I like reading books where I can take what life throws at me and hold it in my hands, where tears of pain and joy and fear mingle and find a home. And now and then, laugh out loud. I hope you do, too.

The Bulgarian Training Manual, my debut novel, is published by Clash Books, a scrappy small press run by fearless people who are crazy passionate about books. Its origin was to a trainer at my gym -- where I had gone to find refuge from my disintegrating marriage -- who gave me a bootleg version of a manual that was supposed to transform powerlifters who follow it into Olympic caliber athletes. Not my goal, but I found it weirdly fascinating. Years later, in a class for my MFA, I did a short story based on this memory. After reading it aloud, everyone wanted to know what came next. Huh? There's more? I had no idea, but I had to find out. And that, eventually, after years and years of thinking and writing and reimagining became this book.

In the meantime, I raised three children who, I hope, will enjoy reading for many years to come.