Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Trenton Makes
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://tadziokoelb.com/
CITY: Brooklyn
STATE: NY
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
Anna Stein, ICM Partners, moppenheimer@icmpartners.com
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2017036331
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2017036331
HEADING: Koelb, Tadzio
000 00657nz a2200133n 450
001 10484901
005 20170620114218.0
008 170620n| azannaabn |n aaa
010 __ |a n 2017036331
040 __ |a DLC |b eng |e rda |c DLC
053 _0 |a PS3611.O3628
100 1_ |a Koelb, Tadzio
670 __ |a Trenton makes, 2018: |b ECIP t.p. (Tadzio Koelb)
670 __ |a The Bookseller website, viewed June 20, 2017 |b (Koelb is a graduate of the University of East Anglia. He is a reviewer and essayist for a variety of publications that include the New York Times and the Times Literary Supplement. He lives in Brooklyn) |u http://www.thebookseller.com/news/debut-novel-tadzio-koelb-atlantic-528066
THE NYT ARTICLE IS A REVIEW BY THE AUTHOR; DID NOT INCLUDE:
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Parsons School of Design, B.F.A., 1993; Winchester School of Art, M.A. (fine arts), 1997; University of East Anglia, M.A. (creative writing), 2008.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, journalist, editor, translator, and consultant. Freelance writer, editor, translator, and journalist, 2007–; freelance communications consultant, 2010–; Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, lecturer in creative, business and technical writing, 2011–; Misty K. Snow for U.S. Senate, Utah, senior writer, 2016; the New School, New York, NY, guest lecturer, October 2017. Held residencies at the Corporation of Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY, 2010; Caldera Arts Center, Sisters, OR, 2011; and I-Park Foundation, East Hadden, CT, 2012. Volunteer experience includes Moon Township for Obama, field organizer, 2008; NY Cares, GED adult education team leader, 2013-14; and Rutgers University University Senate, senator, 2017–.
MEMBER:American Association of University Professors, American Federation of Teachers (AFL-CIO), National Book Critics Circle.
WRITINGS
Contributor of reviews and features on books, literature, and art to periodicals including the Brooklyn Rail, New York Times Book Review, Times Literary Supplement, Guardian, Literary Review, New Statesman, Art in America, and the Jewish Quarterly. Also contributor to websites, including the Brooklyn Rail, Author of critical biography of Lawrence Durrell for British Writers Retrospective Vol. III, edited by Jay Parini, Charles Scribners Sons, 2009. Translate and copy-edit book-length publications, including Persona, a major exhibition catalogue for the Royal Museum for Central Africa, and Keep on Running: The Story of Island Records for Universal-Island Records, Ltd. Proofread single issues of scholarly publications including the Journal of Afrotropical Zoology and Africana Linguistica. Write statements and biographies for artists in New York and elsewhere. Translator of André Gide’s novel Paludes.
SIDELIGHTS
Tadzio Koelb is a writer whose work includes articles, reviews, and essays for a variety of publications. He also teaches creative writing and other writing courses. In terms of teaching, his primary areas of expertise include art criticism, creative nonfiction, literary criticism, literary translation, literature and creative writing, and technical editing and technical writing translation.
In his debut novel, Trenton Makes, Koelb tells the story of Abe Kunstler, whose life has become one of lies and deceptions. The novel takes place in Trenton, New Jersey, once a booming factory town after World War II but a place that is on a steady decline until the 1960s when factories are closing and hippies and drugs are everywhere. Abe is not a happy man, primarily because he is keeping a deadly secret. Abe used to be a woman, but she killed her traumatized husband during an argument after he returned from World War II. Afterwards she disguises herself as her husband with a haircut and tight bindings. Her deception is made slightly easier because of the physique she acquired working in a factory during the war.
Operating on the belief that only a man can truly make it the world, the woman now named Abe goes on to make a life, marrying a woman named Inez, an alcoholic and former dancehall girl. A son eventually comes on the scene, and Abe convinces Inez the boy is his. Abe sees the child as proof of his masculinity. The world, however, is changing rapidly. By the 1960s a generational divide is growing as America becomes mired in the Vietnam War and a counter culture is rising. Meanwhile, Abe is still haunted by his past and the ruthless acts he has committed. Eventually, the life Abe has created is threatened, leading Abe to become desperate and unsure of what he willing to do keep his past a secret.
Koelb “deftly confronts gender, identity, and socioeconomic limits to create a piercing tragedy,” wrote Terry Hong in Booklist, also pointint out in the review that the name Kunstler is significant because in German it means “both artist and performer.” Calling Trenton Makes a “taut debut,” a Publishers Weekly contributor went on to note: “Koelb is insightful, if not always subtle, about how short the era of triumphant white American manhood was.” Patrick Sullivan, writing in Library Journal, noted that Abe’s story explores the idea of gender and an individual’s identity, especially in relation to the profound roles that they have in a person’s life. Sullivan wrote that the tale reveals “how devastating it is for those who become strangers or impostors in their own lives.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, February 15, 2018, Terry Hong, review of Trenton Makes, p. 38.
Library Journal, February 15, 2018, Patrick Sullivan, “Fiction,” includes review of Trenton Makes p. 51.
Publishers Weekly, November 20, 2017, review of Trenton Makes, p. 67.
ONLINE
ChronicleVitae, https://chroniclevitae.com/ (March 19, 2018), author profile.
Tadzio Koelb Website, https://tadziokoelb.com (March 19, 2018).
About
• • • Meet the Tadzios • • •
Representation
ICM Partners
Novels
2018 TRENTON MAKES forthcoming from Doubleday (US), Atlantic (UK), Buchet-Chastel (France)
Stories, Poems, Translations
2017 “Poems for My Roman Death No.s 1 & 4”, Alexandria Quarterly, Vol. 3, Spring
2015 Morasses, André Gide, NY: Calypso Editions
2015 “Katabasis”, The Brooklyn Rail
2013 “About Brooklyn, 1983”, Sakura Review, Issue IV
2013 “An Unknown Soldier”, The Brooklyner
2012 “Primogeniture”, > kill author, Issue 20
2010 “Six of Half a Dozen”, Ozone Park Journal, Spring
2010 “A Damn Good Job”, The Madison Review, Spring
Residencies
2012 I-Park Residency, I-Park Foundation, East Hadden, Connecticut
2011 Caldera Artist-in-residence, Caldera Arts Center, Sisters, Oregon
2010 Yaddo Residency, Corporation of Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, New York
Essays, Book Chapters, Exhibition Catalogues
2016 “Edwige Fouvry: New Paintings”, Dolby Chadwick Gallery
2014 “Anne Siv Falkenberg Pedersen and the Strong Spirit”, Wilderness Travels,
Billedkunstnerne i Oslo og Akershus, Norway
2014 “The Silent Power of Design”, CRETUS, Fall
2013 “Durrell’s Jews: From Justine to Judith”, Tablet, October
2012 “The Art of Ron Lent and Ethan Cornell”, Case Studies, Saddleback College Art Gallery, California
2010 “Fiction as History (as Fiction) in The Kindly Ones”, The Jewish Quarterly, Spring
2009 “Lawrence Durrell”, in British Writers Retrospective, Vol. III, Jay Parini, ed., NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons
2009 “A Few Thoughts on Chester Himes on the 100th Anniversary of His Birth”, The Third Estate
2008 “Iréne Némirovsky and the Death of the Critic”, The Jewish Quarterly, Autumn
1998 “The Swallower”, Hugged for a Nickel exhibition catalogue, Hanse-office Gallery, Brussels
1997 “On Questions, Negation, and Hunger”, OPEN, Moving Art Studio, Brussels
Book Reviews
2017 Beast, Paul Kingsnorth, The New York Times
2017 Gravel Heart, Abdulrazak Gurnah, The Times Literary Supplement
2017 The Many Voices of Lydia Davis, Jonathan Evans, The Times Literary Supplement
2017 Go Home, Sohrab Homi Fracis, The Brooklyn Rail
2016 The Gun Room, Georgina Harding, The Brooklyn Rail
2016 Forty Martyrs, Philip F. Deaver, The Brooklyn Rail
2016 Leica Format, Daša Drndić, The Times Literary Supplement
2015 All the Houses, Karen Olsson, The New York Journal of Books
2015 The Reflection, Hugo Wilcken, The Brooklyn Rail
2015 Watchlist, Bryan Hurt, ed., The Brooklyn Quarterly
2015 Watermark, Sean O’Reilly, The Times Literary Supplement
2014 The Brotherhood of Book Hunters, Raphaël Jerusalmy, The New York Times
2014 One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses, Lucy Corin, The Isle of Youth, Laura van den Berg, The Times Literary Supplement
2014 Back to Back, Julia Franck, The Washington Independent Review of Books
2013 Call Me Brooklyn, Eduardo Lago, The Times Literary Supplement
2013 The Childhood of Jesus, J. M. Coetzee, The Washington Independent Review of Books
2013 The No Variations, Luis Chitarroni, The Times Literary Supplement
2013 A Marker to Measure Drift, Alexander Maksik, The Washington Independent Review of Books
2013 By Blood, Ellen Ullman, The Jewish Quarterly
2013 The Fall of the Stone City, Ismail Kadare, The Times Literary Supplement
2012 The Last Man Standing, Davide Longo, The Times Literary Supplement
2012 Istanbul was a Fairy Tale, Mario Levi, The Times Literary Supplement
2012 The Quiddity of Will Self, Sam Mills, The Times Literary Supplement
2012 The Roundabout Man, Clare Morrall, The Times Literary Supplement
2011 Everything Beautiful Began After, Simon Van Booy, The Times Literary Supplement
2011 Ruta Tannenbaum, Miljenko Jergović, The Times Literary Supplement
2011 Scenes from Village Life, Amoz Oz, The Times Literary Supplement
2011 Daisy Buchanan’s Daughter, Tom Carson, The New York Times
2011 Mr. Chartwell, Rebecca Hunt, The New York Times
2011 The Slap, Christos Tsiolkas, The Guardian
2011 The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, David Mitchell
2011 A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction, Ruth Franklin, The Jewish Quarterly
2011 Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert, trans. Lydia Davis, The Times Literary Supplement
2010 How Much Land Does a Man Need, Leo Tolstoy, trans. Boris Dralyuk, The Times Literary Supplement
2010 A Russian Novel, Emmanuel Carrere, The Times Literary Supplement
2010 Stranded (En Rade), J.-K. Huysmans, trans. Brendan King, The Times Literary Supplement
2010 The Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai, Ruiyan Xu, The Times Literary Supplement
2010 Des Hommes, Laurent Mauvignier, The Times Literary Supplement
2010 The Passport, Herta Müller, The Times Literary Supplement
2009 Esther’s Inheritance, Sándor Márai, The Guardian
2009 The Last Chance: Roads of Freedom IV, Jean-Paul Sartre, The Guardian
2009 Crime, Irvine Welsh, The Guardian
2009 The Tragedy of the Street of Flowers, José Maria de Eça de Queiroz, The Guardian
2009 The Wedding in Auschwitz, Erich Hackl, The Times Literary Supplement
2009 The Northern Clemency, Philip Hensher, The Guardian
2009 From A to X, John Berger, The Guardian
2009 I Play the Drums in a Band Called okay, Toby Litt, The Guardian
2009 Child 44, Tom Rob Smith, The Guardian
2009 The Girl Who Was Going to Die, Glyn Maxwell, The Guardian
2009 The White King, Gyorgy Dragomán, The Guardian
2009 The Three Suitors of Fred Belair, E.A. Markham, The Guardian
2008 Me and Kaminski, Daniel Kehlmann, The Literary Review
2008 The Blue Manuscript, Sabiha Al Khemir, The Times Literary Supplement
2008 The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery, The Times Literary Supplement
2008 My Fantoms, Théophile Gautier, The Times Literary Supplement
2008 Dreams of Rivers and Seas, Tim Parks, The Times Literary Supplement
2008 Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet, Joanne Proulx, The New Statesman
2008 The Ossians, Doug Johnstone, The New Statesman
2007 A Grave in the Air, Stephen Henighan, The Times Literary Supplement
2007 Girl Meets Boy, Ali Smith, The New Statesman
2007 The Bridge of the Golden Horn, Emine Sevgi Özdamar
2007 Last Stop Salina Cruz, David Lalé, The Times Literary Supplement
2007 Trespass, Valerie Martin, The New Statesman
2007 Secrets of the Sea, Nicholas Shakespeare, The New Statesman
Art Reviews
2014 Alibis: Sigmar Polke 1963–2010, Museum of Modern Art, CRETUS
2014 Gauguin: Metamorphoses, Museum of Modern Art, The Times Literary Supplement
2013 Balthus: Cats and Girls – Paintings and Provocations, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Times Literary Supplement
2012 The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-garde, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY Arts Magazine
2011 Fractured Tales, New Paintings by Philemona Williamson at June Kelly Gallery, Art in America
Tadzio Koelb
3rd degree connection3rd
Writer
Freelance University of East Anglia
Greater New York City Area 360 360 connections
InMail Send an InMail to Tadzio Koelb More actions
Tadzio Koelb is a freelance communications professional authoring fundraising materials including LoIs, grant proposals, private gift proposals, mandatory grant reports, stewardship documents, direct mail, and e-blasts; institutional documents including internal and external newsletters, recruitment materials, and digital content (including websites and social media); and executive materials such as ghosted editorials and other articles for popular publication, talking points, and speeches. Clients include MSF/Doctors Without Borders, ALIMA, Columbia University Medical Center, Bennington College, the Abu Dhabi Education Council, FERN, Heinrich Böll Stiftung, HIVOS, and Milieu, Ltd. He also provides quality editing and translating services for museums, research institutions, private scholars, and mass-market publishers.
Tadzio's writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, the New Statesman, and a number of other publications on both sides of the Atlantic. His short critical biography of Lawrence Durrell appeared in British Writers Retrospective Vol. III, and Morasses, his translation of André Gide's novel Paludes, was published in 2015. His novel, TRENTON MAKES, is forthcoming from Doubleday in the US, Atlantic in the UK, and Buchet-Chastel in France.
Traveling with his wife, a public health specialist, Tadzio has lived in Belgium, France, Spain, England, Rwanda, Madagascar, Tunisia, and Uzbekistan.
Specialties: Writing, proofreading, editing, French-English translation.
Media (2)This position has 2 media
Trenton Makes by Tadzio Koelb | PenguinRandomHouse.com
Trenton Makes by Tadzio Koelb | PenguinRandomHouse.com
This media is a link
'Flat-out astonishing' debut novel Trenton Makes to Atlantic
'Flat-out astonishing' debut novel Trenton Makes to Atlantic
This media is a link
Show less Show less of Tadzio’s summary
Close
Get the LinkedIn app and see more profiles like Tadzio’s anytime, anywhere
wes.solem@gmail.com
Send me a link Or send me an SMS instead Tadzio Koelb
Tadzio Koelb
Writer
Experience
Freelance
Author, editor, translator, journalist
Company NameFreelance
Dates Employed2007 – Present Employment Duration11 yrs
Contribute reviews and features on books and literature to publications including The New York Times Book Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, The Literary Review, The New Statesman, Art in America and The Jewish Quarterly. Author of critical biography of Lawrence Durrell for British Writers Retrospective Vol. III. Translate and copy-edit book-length publications for a variety of clients, including Persona, a major exhibition catalogue for the Royal Museum for Central Africa, and Keep on Running: The Story of Island Records for Universal-Island Records, Ltd. Proofread single issues of scholarly publications including The Journal of Afrotropical Zoology and Africana Linguistica. Write statements and biographies for artists in New York and elsewhere. Translator of André Gide's novel Paludes.
Media (16)This position has 16 media
Previous Next
Trenton Makes by Tadzio Koelb | PenguinRandomHouse.com
Trenton Makes by Tadzio Koelb | PenguinRandomHouse.com
This media is a link
Morasses By Andre Gide Translated by Tadzio Koelb
Morasses By Andre Gide Translated by Tadzio Koelb
This media is an image
The Brooklyn Rail: Forty Martyrs by Philip Deaver
The Brooklyn Rail: Forty Martyrs by Philip Deaver
This media is a link
Washington Independent Review of Books - Back to Back by Julia Franck
Washington Independent Review of Books - Back to Back by Julia Franck
This media is a link
Persona, Masks of Africa. Identities hidden and revealed
Persona, Masks of Africa. Identities hidden and revealed
This media is an image
Washington Independent Review of Books - The Childhood of Jesus by JM Coetzee
Washington Independent Review of Books - The Childhood of Jesus by JM Coetzee
This media is a link
The Brooklyner: An Unknown Soldier
The Brooklyner: An Unknown Soldier
This media is a link
Keep On Running: The Story of Island Records
Keep On Running: The Story of Island Records
This media is an image
Rutgers University
Lecturer, Creative Writing, Business and Technical Writing, Expository Writing, Technical Editing
Company NameRutgers University
Dates EmployedAug 2011 – Present Employment Duration6 yrs 8 mos
LocationNew Jersey
Develop syllabi and assignments in line with curricula and instructional objectives, build and maintain interactive Web venue, evaluate student performance.
Media (2)This position has 2 media
Advanced Fiction Syllabus
Advanced Fiction Syllabus
This media is a document
Tadzio's Student Evaluations
Tadzio's Student Evaluations
This media is a document
Freelance
Communications Consultant
Company NameFreelance
Dates EmployedJan 2010 – Present Employment Duration8 yrs 3 mos
LocationVarious
Seasoned communications professional authoring fundraising materials including LoIs, grant proposals, private gift proposals, mandatory grant reports, stewardship documents, direct mail, and e-blasts; institutional documents including internal and external newsletters, recruitment materials, and digital content; and executive materials such as ghosted editorials and other articles for popular publication, talking points, and speeches. Clients include MSF/Doctors Without Borders, ALIMA, Columbia University Medical Center, Bennington College, FERN, Heinrich Böll Stiftung, HIVOS, and Milieu, Ltd.
Media (1)This position has 1 media
No Valley Without Shadows: MSF and the fight for affordable ARVs in South Africa
No Valley Without Shadows: MSF and the fight for affordable ARVs in South Africa
This media is a link
Misty K. Snow for US Senate
Senior Writer
Company NameMisty K. Snow for US Senate
Dates EmployedJul 2016 – Nov 2016 Employment Duration5 mos
Write and edit eblasts, solicitations, and other materials for Misty K. Snow, Utah's Democratic Party candidate for US Senate, and the first major-party transgender Senate candidate.
Media (2)This position has 2 media
Home
Home
This media is a link
You Don't Know Me - Misty K. Snow for US Senate campaign e-blast
You Don't Know Me - Misty K. Snow for US Senate campaign e-blast
This media is a document
The Brooklyn Quarterly
Deputy Managing Editor
Company NameThe Brooklyn Quarterly
Dates EmployedAug 2014 – Nov 2015 Employment Duration1 yr 4 mos
LocationBrooklyn, NY
Volunteer Deputy Managing Editor for Brooklyn-based literary publication.
Media (2)This position has 2 media
Dude, What Are You Looking At? - The Brooklyn Quarterly
Dude, What Are You Looking At? - The Brooklyn Quarterly
This media is a link
The Brooklyn Quarterly - A magazine of literature and public ideas.
The Brooklyn Quarterly - A magazine of literature and public ideas.
This media is a link
Clifford Chance LLP
Editor
Company NameClifford Chance LLP
Dates EmployedMay 2006 – Aug 2007 Employment Duration1 yr 4 mos
Researched, contributed to and copyedited monthly client newsletters; oversaw interactive client-matter Websites; edited and authored promotional and recruitment materials. Edited legal documents with emphasis on EU competition and regulatory law, IT policy, IP and patents; edited complaints, responses to SOs, and merger submissions as well as policy papers, articles for publication, and general correspondence.
Georgetown University Law Center
Development Assistant
Company NameGeorgetown University Law Center
Dates EmployedAug 2003 – Jun 2005 Employment Duration1 yr 11 mos
Member of the team responsible for writing and editing large-scale direct mailings, authored promotional pamphlets, and generated the Executive Director’s correspondence. Provided administrative support including travel arrangements, donor database management, basic expense accounting, Web-based research, and other clerical duties in the development office of American’s largest law school.
Show less
Education
University of East Anglia
University of East Anglia
Degree NameMA Field Of StudyCreative Writing - Prose
Dates attended or expected graduation 2007 – 2008
Activities and Societies: Graduate Students Club
The UK's oldest and most prestigious writing program.
Winchester School of Art
Winchester School of Art
Degree NameMA Field Of StudyFine Arts
Dates attended or expected graduation 1996 – 1997
Activities and Societies: Student representative
Parsons School of Design
Parsons School of Design
Degree NameBachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) Field Of StudyPainting
Dates attended or expected graduation 1989 – 1993
A four-year program spent in Paris, France.
The New School
The New School
Degree NameBFA Field Of StudyFine/Studio Arts, General
Dates attended or expected graduation 1989 – 1993
Tadzio Koelb
Part-time Lecturer at Rutgers University at New Brunswick
Send Message
Follow
Profile
Featured Work
Aws4 request&x amz signedheaders=host&x amz signature=136c7d904c28f0af78445461db618bc1b06509849855dea43acae5d995d74b49
Trenton Makes
Aws4 request&x amz signedheaders=host&x amz signature=79c360ecd380093032d16713784f4b210bbec54f98f23654391d625e02d42785
Morasses
2015
Publications
Trenton Makes
Forthcoming 3/2018 NY: Doubleday; London: Atlantic; Paris: Buchet-Chastel
Morasses
André Gide, John Reed
12/2015 Calypso Editions
"Katabasis"
6/2015 The Brooklyn Rail
“An Unknown Soldier”
2013 The Brooklyner
“About Brooklyn, 1983”
5/2013 Sakura Review, Issue IV
“Primogeniture”
2012 > kill author, Issue 20
“Six of Half a Dozen”
2010 Ozone Park Journal, Spring
“A Damn Good Job”
2010 The Madison Review, Spring
“The Silent Power of Design”
2014 CRETUS, Fall
“Durrell’s Jews: From Justine to Judith”
10/2013 Tablet
“Fiction as History (as Fiction) in The Kindly Ones”
2010 The Jewish Quarterly, Spring
“Lawrence Durrell”
2009 British Writers Retrospective, Vol. III, Jay Parini, ed., NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons
“Iréne Némirovsky and the Death of the Critic”
2008 The Jewish Quarterly, Autumn
The Many Voices of Lydia Davis, Jonathan Evans
2017 The Times Literary Supplement
Go Home, Sohrab Homi Fracis
2017 The Brooklyn Rail
The Gun Room, Georgina Harding
2016 The Brooklyn Rail
Forty Martyrs, Philip F. Deaver
2016 The Brooklyn Rail
Leica Format, Daša Drndic
2016 The Times Literary Supplement
All the Houses, Karen Olsson
2015 The New York Journal of Books
The Reflection, Hugo Wilcken
2015 The Brooklyn Rail
Watchlist, Bryan Hurt, ed.
2015 The Brooklyn Quarterly
The Brotherhood of Book Hunters, Raphaël Jerusalmy
2014 The New York Times
One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses, Lucy Corin, The Isle of Youth, Laura van den Berg
2014 The Times Literary Supplement
The Childhood of Jesus, J. M. Coetzee
2013 The Washington Independent Review of Books
Call Me Brooklyn, Eduardo Lago
2014 The Times Literary Supplement
View All
Languages
French Fluent
Spanish (Spain) Conversational
Memberships
National Book Critics' Circle
AFT/AAUP
About Me
Tadzio Koelb is a graduate of the University of East Anglia, England’s oldest and most prestigious creative writing program. His novel TRENTON MAKES if forthcoming from Doubleday in the US, Atlantic in the UK, and Buchet-Chastel in France.
In addition to writing fiction he is an active reviewer and essayist for a variety of publications that include The New York Times and The Times Literary Supplement. Other publications include Morasses (a translation of André Gide’s novel Paludes) and a short critical biography of Lawrence Durrell for Jay Parini’s British Writers Retrospective. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches creative writing and other writing courses at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
My disciplines and areas of professional expertise include…
Art criticism Creative Nonfiction Literary Criticism Literary translation Literature and creative writing Technical editing Technical Writing Translation
Current work
TRENTON MAKES, a novel, is forthcoming from Doubleday. Trenton Makes tells the story of a woman who kills her husband in a commonplace domestic brawl and takes on his identity, living out the rest of her days in his legacy, as a man, Abraham Kunstler. With painstaking care, Kunstler morphs himself into a compelling simulacrum of a man and secures work in the wire factories of Trenton, New Jersey. Crippled by paranoia of being discovered, he remains an oddity and outsider in the eyes of his fellow workers, and becomes obsessed with producing an heir, a boy.
My Website
Download Curriculum Vitae
Honors
I-Park Residency
2012 I-Park Foundation, East Hadden, Connecticut
Caldera Artist-in-residence
2011 Caldera Arts Center, Sisters, Oregon
Yaddo Residency
2010 Corporation of Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, New York
Education
Parsons School of Design
1993 Bachelor's, Fine Arts
University of East Anglia
2008 Master's, Creative Writing
Winchester School of Art
1996 Master's, Fine Arts
Experience
New School
10/2017 - 10/2017 Guest Lecturer: Site Specific: Art Writing, MFA Writing Program
10/2017 - 10/2017 Guest Lecturer: Accelerated Writing Workshop, Continuing Education Program
Rutgers University at New Brunswick
8/2011 - Present Part-Time Lecturer
The Brooklyn Quarterly
7/2014 - 3/2016 Deputy Managing Editor (volunteer)
Service
International Rescue Committee
3/2017 - Present Community Interpreter, French–English
Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences, Writers House
2017 - 2017 Judge, Edna Herzberg Prizes in Creative Non-fiction
Misty K Snow for US Senate
8/2016 - 11/2016 Senior Writer
Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences, Writers House
2015 - 2016 Panel Member, Writers House Information Sessions
Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences, Writers House
2015 - 2016 Reader and panel member, “Writers from Rutgers” Reading Series
View All
3/4/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1520202020674 1/1
Print Marked Items
Trenton Makes
Publishers Weekly.
264.47 (Nov. 20, 2017): p67.
Trenton Makes.
By Tadzio Koelb.
Mar. 2018. 224p. Doubleday, $25 (9780385543385).
WWII is over, and men return home, many to left-behind wives who became wholly self-supporting citizens out of necessity. For one such couple in Trenton, New Jersey, the postwar clash proves fatal, and the sole survivor completely reinvents herself. "My name is Abe Kunstler. I was a soldier and a POW ... and I was wounded in the war." The name is especially telling. In German, Kunstler is both artist and performer, and Abe is a thorough creation. His haircut, fitted suit, and the necessary, body-altering bindings, attributed to war wounds--all affirm manhood. Deliberately, he acquires the symbols of masculine success--factory job, wife, home, even an heir. Nineteen years later, that son, compellingly named Art, becomes the greatest threat to Abe's existence. First-time novelist Koelb, an Andre Gide translator and Rutgers writing instructor, spent two years learning Trenton's historical vernacular via radio serials and period tabloids. With that scrupulously acquired voice, he deftly confronts gender, identity, and socioeconomic limits to create a piercing tragedy of a life caught between free will and utter desperation.--Terry Hong
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Hong, Terry. "Trenton Makes." Booklist, 15 Feb. 2018, p. 38. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A531171578/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=97e7d8f2. Accessed 19 Mar. 2018.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Trenton Makes
Tadzio Koelb. Doubleday, $25 (224p) ISBN 978-0-385-54338-5
In this taut debut, Koelb takes on manhood and the rise and fall of the American Century as Trenton, N.J.,
evolves from a booming postwar factory town to a place full of closed factories and dope-smoking, draftdodging
hippies. The protagonist, Abe Kunstler, is a watchful, angry man whose life is predicated on
keeping his secret: he is no man at all, but a woman who killed her traumatized veteran husband in a marital
fight, cut her hair, and, physically built up from wartime factory work, went out into the world. For Abe,
power lies in manliness, not the weak body of a disrespected female. For a while he achieves that power: he
acquires the suit that makes him feel like a "real man"; a marriage of sorts with Inez, a dancehall girl with a
taste for alcohol; and even a son. But the son intended as the final proof and future of Abe's masculinity
comes of age when America is riven by generational divides and mired in a senseless war. Koelb is
insightful, if not always subtle, about how short the era of triumphant white American manhood was and its
tendency to fight a rear-guard action that hurts men and those they love. Agent: Anna Stein, ICM Partners.
(Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Trenton Makes." Publishers Weekly, 20 Nov. 2017, p. 67. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A517262060/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e3ca54fd.
Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A517262060
"fiction." Library Journal, 15 Feb. 2018, p. 51+.
Koelb, Tadzio. Trenton Makes. Doubleday. Mar. 2018. 224p. ISBN 9780385543385. $25; ebk. ISBN 9780385543392. F
DEBUT This ambitious first novel addresses very important subject matter: gender and identity. Set in Trenton, NJ, the story begins just after World War II. Protagonist Abe Kunstler is a hard-drinking laborer who works with a large group of men at a wire factory. The only difference between Abe and everybody else there is that Abe is actually a woman who has been living as a man since accidentally killing her abusive husband in a violent domestic quarrel. As unlikely as it may sound, Abe is somehow, we are given to believe, able to maintain this life for decades, even finding a way to marry a woman and have a son. Koelb is obviously exploring complex emotional and psychological territory here. Unfortunately, he leaves a great deal undeveloped and unexamined--especially in terms of Abe's motivation, psychology, and interior life. Readers may therefore be unable to accept the main premise of the novel. Nonetheless, the author's overall message is powerful. Koelb shows how profoundly gender roles influence individual lives and how devastating it is for those who become strangers or impostors in their own lives. VERDICT Recommended for readers interested in gender and identity. [See Prepub Alert, 9/15/17.]--Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community Coll., CT
BOOK REVIEW | FICTION
A Mystic Hero in Search of a ‘Beast’
By TADZIO KOELBSEPT. 15, 2017
Continue reading the main storyShare This Page
Share
Tweet
Pin
Email
More
Save
Photo
Credit Leesh Adamerovich
BEAST
By Paul Kingsnorth
184 pp. Graywolf Press. Paper, $16.
“Beast” is narrated by a tramp and would-be mystic, Edward Buckmaster, living alone in a ruined farmhouse on an English moor. He speaks fluently of the hermitages of Saints Anthony and Cuthbert. We first meet him standing alone in a freezing river, a kind of autobaptism. It is never made clear if some sin is driving him — he seems to have fantasized about assaulting a woman and killing her child — or if he is just someone too eccentric to function in society.
“Beast” is the second installment of a promised trilogy. The first, the prize-winning novel “The Wake,” is the story of Buccmaster of Holland, who fights Norman invaders across a similar English moor in the 1060s. The association is loose enough that presumably each volume can stand alone.
Kingsnorth’s latest features a variation on the same protagonist a millennium later, in the present day. While attempting to repair his tarpaulin roof during a storm, Buckmaster seems to lose consciousness, as his narration drops off abruptly. When readers next meet him — it is unclear how much time has passed — he is badly injured. He is also entirely alone, and the laws of nature have been suspended. As he gradually regains his strength over time under a sun that seems never to set, he takes the familiar road to town, only to find himself again and again near the church where he started.
Photo
This world, although “white and new and washed clean,” is nevertheless a place of inherent enmity, where even such normally benign beings as trees “sprout up from the Earth they reach out in all directions they reach out for you they will smother you they will never stop growing and dividing and colonising.” It is also a place with limited punctuation, presumably part of Kingsnorth’s strategy to create language to match his narrator’s mental state. Other tactics include beginning and ending sections of the book midword, and imposing a temporary moratorium on capital letters.
Near the church that Buckmaster can’t seem to escape, he spots “some kind of animal” — or does he? He finds little evidence the sighting was real, and a full quarter of the novel passes before he gets another brief look at “the thing that walks.” Even then, the creature is a mystery: “It was not a dog or a deer or a fox or a badger.” Buckmaster, like a latter-day Adam, wants “to name this place and all the things in it,” so he sets out on a quest, the as-yet unnamed thing his Questing Beast.
When Buckmaster is not hunting for what turns out already to have a name — “a big cat a big black cat a big black cat with yellow eyes” — he drinks mug after mug of water, scrounges berries, rants that God is a “tyrant” and ponders the nature of creation, asking, “What if each of us is everything?” He has what might be either dreams or flashbacks. This blurring of memory and invention means Buckmaster’s past remains as opaque as his present.
Continue reading the main story
Buy
Beast
Paul Kingsnorth
We earn an affiliate commission with each book purchase, which helps support our journalism at The New York Times.
RELATED COVERAGE
‘The Wake,’ by Paul Kingsnorth SEPT. 4, 2015
In these moments, Kingsnorth forces readers to ask some central questions: Is Buckmaster a visionary or a sad lunatic? Is his story one of salvation, or an indictment of the false promise of heaven in the face of worldly unhappiness? And is “Beast,” like the “thing that walks,” something less exotic than at first it seems?
Tadzio Koelb’s debut novel, “Trenton Makes,” will be published next spring.
A version of this review appears in print on September 17, 2017, on Page BR18 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Fantastic Beast. Today's Paper|Subscribe