She has worked as an editor for Medium, and her work has appeared in the New York Times Modern Love column, Slate, Real Simple, Martha Stewart Living, Oprah, Coastal Living, Poets & Writers, Literary Hub, Catapult, The Millions, The Rumpus, and many other publications. Shearn has an MFA from the University of Minnesota, and currently lives in Brooklyn with her two children.
Shearn applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Animal Instinct, and reported the following:
Page 69 of Animal Instinct is, interestingly, not that representative of the book as a whole. It finds us on a cursed family vacation, the protagonist Rachel and her kids and her ex-husband trying to hang on to a tradition of their old life, even post-divorce -- unsurprisingly it's a fraught week at the shore. The page does contain the line "What an obvious mistake she had made," which feels emblematic of Rachel's married life. Most of the book concerns her adventures and explorations immediately following the divorce, but this scene is an important part of it all, as it shows the reader what she's trying to move so decisively away from. An early reader of the book just texted me today about this scene that it's painful to read, which I took as a compliment.Visit Amy Shearn's website.
The Page 99 Test: How Far Is the Ocean from Here.
Writers Read: Amy Shearn (March 2013).
Q&A with Amy Shearn.
My Book, The Movie: Dear Edna Sloane.
The Page 69 Test: Dear Edna Sloane.
--Marshal Zeringue
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