Featurette: Gayle Brandeis and Many Restless Concerns

What inspired you to write Many Restless Concerns?

My daughter was interested in notorious women of history as a teenager. When I was thumbing through one of the books she asked me to buy, I learned about Countess Bathory, of Hungary who is said to have killed up to 650 girls and women around the turn of the 17th century, and I couldn't stop wondering who these girls and women had been. Their voices haunted me. 

What is the one thing you would like readers to experience from the book?

I'd love readers to come away with the reminder that breaking silences (personal and historical) can be an act of both healing and justice.

Bio:

Gayle Brandeis is the author, most recently, of the novel in poems, Many Restless Concerns: The Victims of Countess Bathory Speak in Chorus (A Testimony), the memoir The Art of Misdiagnosis (Beacon Press), and the poetry collection The Selfless Bliss of the Body (Finishing Line Press). Earlier books include Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write (HarperOne) and the novels The Book of Dead Birds (HarperCollins), which won the Bellwether Prize for Fiction of Social Engagement judged by Barbara Kingsolver, Toni Morrison, and Maxine Hong Kingston, Self Storage (Ballantine), Delta Girls (Ballantine), and My Life with the Lincolns (Henry Holt BYR), which was chosen as a state-wide read in Wisconsin. Her poetry, essays, and short fiction have been widely published in places such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, O (The Oprah Magazine), The Rumpus, Salon, Longreads, and more, and have received numerous honors, including a Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Award, Notable Essays in Best American Essays 2016 and 2019, the QPB/Story Magazine Short Story Award and the 2018 Multi Genre Maverick Writer Award. She served as Inlandia Literary Laureate from 2012-2014 and currently teaches at Sierra Nevada College and Antioch University Los Angeles.