AUTHORS ELIZABETH NUNEZ AND JOANNA RAKOFF

Two women, two memoirs, two extraordinary lives-the subjects of The Halli Casser-Jayne Show, Talk Radio for Fine Minds, Wednesday, October 8, 3 pm ET when Halli is joined at her table by award-winning writers Elizabeth Nunez author of NOT FOR EVERDAY USE and Joanna Rakoff author of MY SALINGER YEARS.

Elizabeth Nunez, PhD, immigrated to the US from Trinidad after completing high school. She is the award-winning author of eight novels, four of them selected as New York Times Editors choice, among her books BOUNDARIES, nominated for the 2012 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Fiction and ANNA IN-BETWEEN awarded the PEN Oakland Award. Nunez is a Distinguished Professor at Hunter College, CUNY, where she teaches fiction writing. Her latest book, the memoir NOT FOR EVERYDAY USE is an astonishing achievement. Tracing the four days from the moment she gets the call that every immigrant fears to the burial of her mother, Nunez tells the haunting story of her lifelong struggle to cope with the consequences of the “sterner stuff” of her parents’ ambitions for their children, and her mother’s seemingly unbreakable conviction that displays of affection are not for everyday use.

Joanna Rakoff’s novel A FORTUNATE AGE won the Goldberg Prize for Jewish Fiction by Emerging Writers and the Elle Readers’ Prize, and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a San Francisco Chronicle best seller. She has written for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Vogue, and other publications. Hailed by critics, Rakoff’s new memoir, MY SALINGER YEAR, is a poignant, keenly observed, and irresistibly funny coming of age story of a girl who at twenty-three, after leaving graduate school, dared to pursue her dreams of becoming a poet. A move to New York City, a job as assistant to the storied literary agent for J. D. Salinger, a love affair -- well, sort of -- Joanna Rakoff’s book MY SALINGER YEAR brillia