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H E R Amanda Stern's fiction, non-fiction and poetry has appeared, among other places, in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine (2001, 2004), Swink, Filmmaker, Fivechapters.com, Venus Magazine, The Believer, Joyland, St. Ann's Review, Salt Hill, Hayden's Ferry Review and Spinning Jenny. For several years she worked in independent film assisting Terry Gilliam, Hal Hartley, Ang Lee, Ted Hope and James Schamus. For two years she made her money as a professional comic co-hosting the celebrity talk show venture, "This is Not a Test," a Lorne Michaels' production, at Catch A Rising Star with Marc Maron. Their guests included: George Plimpton, Phil Hartman, Conan O' Brien, Jon Stewart and Janeane Garofalo among many others. She continued to work for Broadway Video as an on-air host for the unfortunately named Burly Bear Network, a closed circuit college network owned, at that time, by Lorne Michaels. She edited a found art narrative for The Talking Heads Box Set "Once In A Lifetime." In 2003 she founded The Happy Ending Music and Reading Series out of the Happy Ending Bar in Chinatown. Due to the series' success and popularity, she moved it to New York City's premiere performance venue Joe's Pub in January of 2009, where it became the venue's first ever, literary series. She hosts, curates and produces every show. The series was recently accepted into NYFA's sponsorship program. In 2006 she had the great honor to host the very first National Book Awards ceremony, "5 Under 35." In 2007 she hosted PEN American Center's first ever, PENultimate Lit series. That's three first evers, people! The
Long Haul, her debut novel from Soft Skull Press, about a girl, her free therapist and an alcoholic, was released in 2003 and met with critical success. Subsequent to that she published two young adult novels under a pseudonym. Unlike Amanda, her pseudonym is very successful. There is palpable tension, but they manage to deal with Amanda's unspoken envy. She was born and raised in Greenwich Village. Her pseudonym was not. She currently lives in
Brooklyn and is at work on her next novel, a graphic memoir and three children's books for Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin.
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