SATA

PERSONAL

Born July, 1964, in NY; married David Miller (an attorney), June 27, 1993; children: Sam, Holden.

EDUCATION:

Boston University, B.S., 1986; Brooklyn Law School, J.D., 1991.

ADDRESS

• Home - Long Island, NY.
• Agent - Jim McCarthy, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret LLC, 1 Union Square W., Ste. 904, New York, NY 10003.

CAREER

Wrier and family law mediator.

AVOCATIONS:

Swimming.

MEMBER:

Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.

AWARDS:

Bank Street College of Education, 2012, for The Pull of Gravity; Keystone to Reading Award, Wisconsin State Reading Award, Golden Archer Finalist, all 2018, all for The Memory of Things.

WRITINGS

• YOUNG-ADULT NOVELS
• The Pull of Gravity, Frances Foster Books (New York, NY), 2011
• The Summer of Letting Go, Algonquin Young Readers (Chapel Hill, NC), 2014
• The Memory of Things, St. Martin’s Griffin (New York, NY), 2016
• In Sight of Stars, Wednesday Books (New York, NY), 2018
• ,
• Seven Clues to Home (with Nora Raleigh Baskin), Knopf Books for Young Readers (New York, NY), 2020

Author of a blog.

SIDELIGHTS

SUBMITTED IN SGML FORMAT

A practicing attorney, Gae Polisner wrote her first young-adult novel, The Pull of Gravity, after surveying the genre and recognizing that there was a distinct lack of male teen protagonists in contemporary character-driven teen fiction. Encouraged by the critical praise she received, Polisner has continued to craft stories for teens, focusing on themes of grief, abandonment, forgiveness, and family in her novels The Summer of Letting Go, The Memory of Things, and In Sight of Stars.

Although Polisner trained and now works as a lawyer, her talent for writing has always been in evidence. “My first law school paper came back with a big red X on it and a note, ‘This is not a creative writing class,’” as she recalled to New York Times contributor Aileen Jacobson. For relaxation and reflection, Polisner turns to swimming, explaining to Jacobsen that “I realized that when I was blocked in my writing, it would all come to me in the water, so it became a creative outlet.”

 

In The Pull of Gravity readers meet Nick, an over-stressed fourteen-year-old living near Albany, New York. Nick’s morbidly obese father is unemployed and seems content to spend his life on the couch while Nick’s mom works long hours to pay the bills. Not surprisingly, the couple fights often. After one particularly grim war of words, Nick’s dad leaves and decides to walk from Albany to New York City, his hometown. The man’s story piques the interest of local news outlets, which begin covering his trek. Nick has a more-pressing dilemma, however: His best friend Scooter is afflicted with Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome and will soon die of old age. Recently suffering a stroke and with his vital signs worsening, Scooter wants the chance to return a valuable, signed first-edition copy of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men to his estranged father. To help his dying friend, Nick teams up with potential girlfriend Jaycee to make a bus trip across New York State and present the book to Scooter’s dad. On the way, he learns some uncomfortable truths about his own family.

The Pull of Gravity “begins with a bang and ends with another,” declared Michael Cart in his Booklist review of Polisner’s fiction debut. The author won plaudits for introducing two believable teen males in the pages of her story, several critics enjoying Scooter’s habit of quoting the wise Yoda from the “Star Wars” movie trilogy. “Scooter, with his love of life, is a character people will enjoy,” predicted Ed Goldberg in a Voice of Youth Advocates review. “He is a bundle of hope in a hopeless situation.”

In The Summer of Letting Go Francesca Schnell’s thoughts of her dead brother Simon overshadow her excitement at the approach of her sixteenth birthday. Simon drowned four years ago, during a family trip to the ocean, and Francesca’s mom still holds her responsible. With her best friend preoccupied with a new boyfriend, the teen has no one to confide in regarding her suspicions that her father is breaking his marriage vows. A summer job taking care of Frankie Sky, a four-year-old suffering from a serious heart condition, allows Francesca to change course emotionally: Frankie’s resemblance to Simon helps her fill the empty place in her heart and begin to focus on the future.

Describing The Summer of Letting Go as a novel “about grief and the inevitability of placing blame when a tragic accident occurs,” Laura Lehner added that Polisner’s “characters … are well drawn, the dialogue realistic.” “Frankie Sky’s childlike exuberance and occasional misconceptions add heart and humor,” noted a Kirkus Reviews critic, resulting in a “hopeful” story that avoids being “saccharine or simplistic.” Citing Polisner’s story for its “gentleness and thoroughness,” Jennifer Price added in School Library Journal that The Summer of Letting Go is “first-rate realistic fiction with plenty of heart.”

In The Memory of Things Polisner addresses the immediate impact of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on New York City. Sixteen-year-old Kyle Donohue is sitting in her high-school classroom a block away from the World Trade Center when the first of the twin towers collapses. Evacuating the school building and making his way home to Brooklyn, Kyle spies a girl crouched in hiding, a pair of costume angel wings on her back. Realizing that the child is frightened, disoriented, and suffering from amnesia, he convinces her to come home with him, and with his detective dad busy dealing with the city’s tragedy, Kyle attempts to untangle the mystery of who the girl is and where she belongs.

 

A “somber yet hopeful” story, according to a Publishers Weekly critic, The Memory of Things “delves into one of the most emotionally wrenching days in modern American history.” In Kirkus Reviews a critic remarked on Polisner’s use of alternating narratives, with Kyle writing in prose and the girl in “spare, erratically spaced verse that effectively communicates her disorientation.” This dual narrative “presents two different perspectives” on events as they played out on that fateful day, wrote Carrie Shaurette in School Library Journal, and in The Memory of Things “teens who have no memory of 9/11” will gain a “context to a tragedy they may not fully understand.”

In her next YA novel, In Sight of Stars, Polisner tells the story of seventeen-year-old Klee, who, following his father’s death, moves from New York City to the suburbs. Klee’s life revolved around his father, whose love of art and stories filled with myths an magic made him a beloved parent, that is until he committed suicide. Klee’s mother, however, is cold and distant. Furthermore, Klee does not like the fact that his mother made his father forget about a career in art to become a corporate lawyer.

Klee initially feels lost in the suburbs, missing the big city and the weekly trips he used to take with his father to museums and other venues. Fortunately, as he enters his senior year at a new school, he meets Sarah in art class. Sarah is funny and teases him about wallowing in self-pity. Klee finds Sarah makes him happy as she listens intently about the thrill of living in New York City. Meanwhile, Klee is determined that he will create a career for himself in art. Then the relationship between Klee and Sarah goes bad when she cheats on him.

As a result, Klee ends up hurting himself on purpose and winds up in a psychiatric hospital for teenagers called Adolescent Inpatient Psychiatric Center, or “Ape Can.” Once in the Ape Can, Klee receives intensive therapy as readers learn about the various aspects of his life and the fact that not everything Klee believed was actually real. Booklist contributor Anne O’Malley remarked: “Polisner captures the chaos and fog in Klee’s brain as he tries to grab hold of his life.” Helping Klee regain his equilibrium are various characters at the institute, including Sister Agnes Theresa, a staff volunteer. Readers learn about Klee’s past with his father thorough a timeline that alternates between the past and present as Klee comes to terms with the truth about his family. Klee eventually comes rethink his long-held belief that it was his mother’s fault his father committed suicide.

“While Klee’s hot interactions with Sarah illustrate his raging hormones, his growing emotional control and maturity become evident by the end of the novel,” wrote Barbara Johnston in Voice of Youth Advocates. Noting that Polisner handles Klee’s mental illness in a realistic way and not “as a personality flaw, nor as an easy thing to cure,” a Kirkus Reviews contributor went on to call In Sight of Stars “an unapologetic and wry story about … a personal crisis.”

BIOCRIT

PERIODICALS

• Booklist, June 1, 2011, Michael Cart, review of The Pull of Gravity, p. 82; Anne O’Malley, review of In Sight of Stars, p. 50.

• Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, Karen Coats, review of The Pull of Gravity, p. 535; March, 2014, Deborah Stevenson, review of The Summer of Letting Go, p. 372.

• Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2011, review of The Pull of Gravity; February 15, 2014, review of The Summer of Letting Go; June 15, 2016, review of The Memory of Things; January 15, 2018, review of In Sight of Stars.

• New York Times, May 1, 2011, Aileen Jacobson, “To Sell First Novel, Putting That Marketing Degree to Use,” p. 9.

• Publishers Weekly, December 23, 2013, review of The Summer of Letting Go, p. 52; July 18, 2016, review of The Memory of Things, p. 212.

• School Library Journal, June, 2011, Suzanne Gordon, review of The Pull of Gravity, p. 130; February, 2014, Jennifer Prince, review of The Summer of Letting Go, p. 110; July, 2016, Carrie Shaurette, review of The Memory of Things, p. 77; February, 2018, Liz Overberg, review of In Sight of Stars, p. 107.

• Voice of Youth Advocates, June, 2011, Ed Goldberg, review of The Pull of Gravity, p. 171; February, 2014, Laura Lehner, review of The Summer of Letting Go, p. 64; April, 2018, Barbara Johnston, review of In Sight of Stars, p. 64.

ONLINE

• Gae Polisner blog, http://gpolisner.blogspot.com (August 15, 2016).

• Gae Polisner website, http://gaepolisner.com (July 23, 2018).

• Official YABC Blog, http://www.yabookscentral.com/blog/ (March 13, 2018), Beth Edwards, “Author Chat with Gae Polisner (In Sight of Stars), Excerpt, Plus Giveaway!”