Mike Scalise
The Brand New Catastrophe (Sarabande Books, January), a funny and intimate memoir about illness, the body, and family, and Scalise’s diagnosis, at age twenty-four, of a brain tumor and a rare hormonal disorder. Editor: Ariel Lewiton. Agent: Janet Silver of Aevitas Creative Management.
When I realized the project I’d been working on for two years was meant, a collection of bold literary journalism in which Johnson claimed an attractive semi-distance from his subjects. Johnson—like Orlean and crew—reserved a cool privilege to swoop into a narrative with a hilarious parenthetical or an insightful clause, then shift the spotlight back onto the subject at hand, which was always someone else, else, the author little more than the reader’s smart, elusive buddy.
