by Robin Black
Eleanor Bloch and Fay Trachtenberg, my dear friends and my hand-holders-in-chief, enormous thanks to you both.
The wonderful painter Perky Edgerton took time to help me with some of the “art stuff,” and for that I am most grateful.
Henry Dunow is flat out the best agent on earth and one of my favorite people, too. Working with him has brought me not only a brilliant professional ally, but also a dear, close friend.
Lifelong thanks to my family, my siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, in-laws, the living and the missed. Lifelong thanks, and much, much love. And a special, new-member-of-the-family thank-you to my son-in-law, Tom Faure, a writer himself, who reminds me, by example, of what dedication to this craft looks like.
All of my children inspire and strengthen me, and this book belongs to them and to my mother, who is also my first and best reader. But this time around, with my older two grown, it was my youngest, Annie, who got the brunt of having a mom in the throes of becoming a novelist. She encouraged me when I was blue, celebrated with me when I was hopeful, made me mac and cheese, and made me feel loved no matter what. I couldn’t have done it without you, my girl.
For Richard, only a riddle: In a life as full and as fortunate as mine, how is it that you are still my everything? I don’t have an answer. You just are.
Robin Black,
October 2013
BY ROBIN BLACK
Life Drawing
If I loved you, I would tell you this
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ROBIN BLACK is the author of the short story collection If I loved you, I would tell you this. Her stories and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including One Story, Colorado Review, The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, O: The Oprah Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, and the anthology The Best Creative Nonfiction, Vol. I. A recipient of fellowships from the Leeway Foundation and the MacDowell Colony, Black is a graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. She has taught at Bryn Mawr College and in the Brooklyn College MFA program.
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