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Jennifer Cody Epstein

“Gods” Wins APALA Honor Award!

I was thrilled to learn that The Gods of Heavenly Punishment won the honor award for fiction in the 2014 Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature (APAAL)!. The Asian/Pacific American Librar- ians Association (APALA) is an affiliate of the American Library Association, and the AAAL awards promote Asian/Pacific American culture and heritage and are given in five categories, based on literary and artistic merit. Just (...)

Rules to Rewrite History By

Last week I was lucky enough to guest post on the terrific writing blog WriterUnboxed, and decided to throw together a short list of the things I’ve learned about writing historical fiction over the last decade. Somewhat to my surprise, I’ve gotten a lot of great responses, and so thought I’d repost it here for general consumption: 10 Rules (...)

The Paperback is Out! (And the Blogsphere Loves It!)

Last week was a whirlwind of readings, signings and release parties in celebration of the paperback release of Gods (how much do we love the new cover?!). If you missed the physical events never fear–I’ve also been lucky enough to go online to tour, via the ever-wonderful TLC Book Tours and HFVBT. The latter hooked Gods up to some of the best (...)

Join “Gods” For A September Blog Tour!

So summer is over….which means (at least in the Cody-Epstein family) the end of six weeks of blissfully non-work-related activities, spanning from Upstate NY swimming holes and rolling meadows to sprawling sandy beaches in Connecticut and the Hamptons. Sigh. For better or worse, though, it’s time to hit the books again–and what better way to do that then with an (...)

Gather Togather to Discuss “Gods”–Live Book Group Chat 8/20!

Has your book group read (or is planning to read) The Gods of Heavenly Punishment? Don’t have a book group, but still want to talk about the book? Interested in the book even if you haven’t read it yet, and wondering what others are saying about it? Join me and groupsourcing super site Togather.com August 20 for an intimate yet electronically-expansive (...)

Remembering a Fallen Writer — With Her Own Book

In December of 2017, my good friend and writing colleague Sarah Coleman passed away mere days before the finished versions of her luminous novel The Realist came out. Below is a piece I wrote for Publishers Weekly about how our writing group tried to pick up the mantle. Kafka described writing as “utter solitude, the descent into the cold (...)
The Deplorable Within Us

Here is a piece I wrote for McSweeney’s recently, exploring the origins of my latest novel and the eerie, increasing resonance I felt writing it after 2016: My forthcoming novel Wunderland evolved from an impulse to explore a history that — at first — seemed comfortably removed from my own. I’d long been fascinated by Nazi Germany, not so (...)
Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Art of Subversion

Last January, I wrote a guest post for my late friend Sarah Coleman’s fantastic photography/literature blog The Literate Lens. Its themes seem strikingly relevant today, so I thought it was worth reposting. In the run-up to the presidential election last November, few of Donald Trump’s proposals sparked quite as much alarm as his idea for a Muslim “registry.” The idea (...)