Myla Goldberg (born November 19, 1971) is an American novelist and musician.

Biography

Goldberg was born into a Jewish family. She was raised in Laurel, Maryland, and graduated from Eleanor Roosevelt High School, where she was one of the

Scholastic Art & Writing Awards The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers is a nonprofit organization which manages the annual Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, a competition which recognizes talented young artists and writers from across the United States. Scholastic Art & Writin ...

winners in 1989. She majored in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

Oberlin College Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational liberal arts college in the United S ...

, graduating in 1996. She spent a year teaching and writing in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

(providing the germ of her book of essays ''Time's Magpie'', which explores her favorite places within the city), then moved to

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, where she still lives with her husband ( Jason Little) and two daughters. Goldberg is an accomplished amateur musician. She plays the

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...

and

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...

in a Brooklyn-based indie rock quartet, '' The Walking Hellos''. She has performed with The Galerkin Method and the

Bindlestiff Family Cirkus The Bindlestiff Family Cirkus was founded in 1995 by Keith Nelson and Stephanie Monseu. Initially, the duo was named "Fireplay. They toured the world with a mix of circus and sideshow. In 1999, the company became a non-profit organization incorporat ...

. She formerly collaborated with the New York art collective

Flux Factory Flux describes any effect that appears to pass or travel (whether it actually moves or not) through a surface or substance. Flux is a concept in applied mathematics and vector calculus which has many applications to physics. For transport ph ...

. She has contributed song lyrics to the musical group

One Ring Zero One Ring Zero is a modern music group led by Joshua Camp and Michael Hearst that melds many genres and sounds to create a unique type of music. Instruments Hearst plays the theremin and guitar, and Camp plays the accordion and piano. They both pl ...

Career

While in Prague, Goldberg completed her first novel, ''Kirkus'', a story of an Eastern European circus troupe engulfed by the onset of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. She gave it to an agent who shopped it for 18 months, but it was not published by the time she had begun working on ''Bee Season'', so it was shelved. After returning to Brooklyn Goldberg took several jobs, including working on a production of a

Stephen King Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novels. Described as the "King of Horror", a play on his surname and a reference to his high s ...

horror movie. She was let go from that job, which brought an unforeseen benefit - the six months of unemployment benefits checks gave her sufficient time to finish ''Bee Season'' ("It was a grant, as far as I was concerned", she told an Oberlin student interviewer in 2005). Goldberg's first published novel was ''

Bee Season ''Bee Season'' is a 2000 novel by Myla Goldberg. It follows a young girl as she attempts to win the national spelling bee, and the repercussions of her success on the other members of her family. Plot summary Eleven-year-old Eliza Naumann is the ...

'' (

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from ...

), portraying the breakdown of a family and the spiritual explorations of its two children amid a series of

spelling bee A spelling bee is a competition in which contestants are asked to spell a broad selection of words, usually with a varying degree of difficulty. To compete, contestants must memorize the spellings of words as written in dictionaries, and recite ...

s. It was a popular and critical success, and was adapted into a film in 2005. She has also published short stories in ''Virgin Fiction'', ''Eclectic Literary Forum'', '' New American Writing'', ''

McSweeney's McSweeney's Publishing is an American non-profit publishing house founded by Dave Eggers in 1998 and headquartered in San Francisco. Initially publishing the literary journal'' Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern'', the company has moved to n ...

'' and '' Harpers Magazine''. She reviews books for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' and '' Bookforum''. In 2005 Goldberg published a second novel, ''

Wickett's Remedy ''Wickett's Remedy'' is a 2005 historical novel by Myla Goldberg, about the 1918 influenza epidemic. It was published by Doubleday. The novel makes heavy use of annotations, marginalia, and false documents to support its premise; Goldberg has s ...

'' (

2005 File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris was discovered in ...

), which is set during the

1918 influenza epidemic The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was ...

. Her third novel, ''The False Friend'', was published in 2010. It describes a woman whose memory is jogged, causing her to revisit a tragic event in her youth. "It's about memory, hometowns and the adults children turn into," Goldberg told an interviewer. ''Feast Your Eyes'' was published in 2019. "

Song for Myla Goldberg ''Her Majesty the Decemberists'' is the second full-length album by The Decemberists, released on September 9, 2003, by Kill Rock Stars. The song "Song for Myla Goldberg" was written years earlier, after Colin Meloy had been a media escort for t ...

" is track six on The Decemberists' album '' Her Majesty The Decemberists.'' It makes a handful of allusions to ''Bee Season''.

References

External links

Myla Goldberg
at Random House. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Goldberg, Myla 1971 births Living people 21st-century American novelists American satirists American women short story writers American women novelists Jewish American writers Oberlin College alumni People from Laurel, Maryland Place of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American women writers Women satirists 21st-century American short story writers American women non-fiction writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American Jews