Michael Zadoorian
AUTHOR

Michael Zadoorian

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Michael Zadoorian is the author of six works of fiction, including THE LEISURE SEEKER which was made into a Sony Pictures Classics film starring Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland. Coming in March of 2027 is BEAT GIRL: A Novel of Edie Kerouac. In 1942, Edie Parker, a Detroit debutante her mother considered “too wild,” is exiled to New York City, where “too wild” is just right. There she meets a young Jack Kerouac, who has just quit college to devote himself to writing. Their love affair is fireworks from the start. Soon, Edie pulls intellectual ruffians Lucien Carr, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs into her orbit, forming the group that America would call “The Beats.” Edie and her boys tumble headlong into sex, drugs, crime, obsession, and even murder. After Edie and Jack rush into a hasty marriage to get him out of jail, everything falls to pieces. Yet their love for each other endures, even after Jack writes On the Road and is consumed by the fame that ultimately destroys him. BEAT GIRL is Edie Parker’s chance to have her say about the boys’ club she created and readers will finally meet this unforgettable woman: a strong, charismatic free spirit with an endless lust for life and love. In 2020, THE NARCISSISM OF SMALL DIFFERENCES was published. Set in bottomed-out 2009 Detroit, Joe Keen and Ana Urbanek, an unmarried Gen X couple with no kids or mortgage are both on the cusp of forty, both working at jobs that they don't believe in anymore, with varying returns. Ana is successful, Joe is floundering—both caught somewhere between mainstream and alternative culture, sincerity and irony, achievement and arrested development. Together, they ask the questions: Is it possible to outgrow irony? Does not having children make you one? Is there even such a thing as selling out anymore? By turns wry and ribald, poignant and thoughtful, NARCISSISM is the story of Joe and Ana’s life together, their relationship, their tribes, their work and passions, and their comic quest for a life that is their own and no one else’s. His third novel BEAUTIFUL MUSIC is about one young man’s transformation through music. Set in 1970’s era Detroit, Danny Yzemski is a husky, pop radio–loving loner balancing a dysfunctional home life with the sudden harsh realities of freshman year at a high school marked by racial turbulence. When tragedy strikes the family, Danny’s mother becomes increasingly erratic and angry about the seismic cultural shifts unfolding in her city and the world. As she tries to keep it together with the help of Librium, highballs, and breakfast cereal, Danny finds his own reason to carry on: rock ‘n’ roll. BEAUTIFUL MUSIC is a funny and poignant story about the power of music and its ability to save one’s soul. Zadoorian’s second novel THE LEISURE SEEKER was an international bestseller. John and Ella, two eighty-somethings decide to kidnap themselves from the doctors and grown children who run their lives for a final adventure in their ancient Winnebago. The book garnered rave reviews from all over the world. In a starred review, Booklist wrote "THE LEISURE SEEKER is pretty much like life itself: joyous, painful, moving, tragic, mysterious, and not to be missed." The L.A. Times said: Zadoorian is true to these geezers. He draws them in their most honest light. I hoped for a book that would make me laugh during these tight times, and I was rewarded." Sony Pictures Classics made it into a film starring Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland in 2018. Michael Zadoorian's first novel SECOND HAND is about love and loss for a Detroit-area junk store owner. The New York Times Book Review said “SECOND HAND may be a gift from the (Tiki) gods” ..."a romantic adventure that explores what Yeats called 'the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.'" Selected for Barnes & Noble's Discover Great New Writers Program and the American Booksellers Association Book Sense program, Second Hand also received the Great Lakes Colleges Association prestigious New Writers Award. Translated into Italian, French and Portuguese, it continues to be a cult favorite. His short story collection THE LOST TIKI PALACES OF DETROIT follows characters coming to terms with the past and the present in a broken city. Lansing State Journal said: "Stories that grab you, shake you and slap you upside the head." Ann Arbor Observer called it “wildly funny and more than a little crazy, with a heart-breaking affection for the battered lives they portray.” Zadoorian is a recipient of the Michigan Author Award from the Library of Michigan, a Kresge Artist Fellowship in the Literary Arts, the Columbia University Anahid Literary Award, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, the GLIBA Great Lakes Great Reads Award, and two Michigan Notable Book Awards. His fiction and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Literary Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, American Short Fiction, Witness, Great Lakes Review, North American Review, Literary Hub, The Millions, Rust Belt Magazine, Huffington Post and others. His work has been translated into over twenty-five languages worldwide.
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