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Jackie Polzin Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Jackie Polzin
Photo: Travis Olson

Jackie Polzin

Jackie Polzin Biography

Jackie Polzin is a writer currently residing in St. Paul, Minnesota with her husband, two children and a small dog.

Jackie Polzin's website

This bio was last updated on 02/25/2021. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.

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Interview

Jackie Polzin talks about her debut novel, Brood, and how her own experience caring for chickens contributed to it.

First of all, why chickens?

When I was 30, my partner and I got chickens. They were my first pets since childhood. I compensated by giving them a lot of attention, and that attention inspired the book. I knew I could spend time with the ideas the chickens provoked. Some broad ones: that a chicken's egg-heavy existence seldom bears new life; that a chicken is a pet whose value is complicated by its utility, often thought of as less-than when it stops laying eggs; that caring for a chicken yields very little emotional feedback. These ideas aren't stated directly but they're part of the story and quite specific to chickens.

What made you decide to leave the narrator unnamed?

Grief is an isolating force in the story. The narrator is coming to terms with the loss of an identity she had imagined for herself, facing the likelihood she will never be a mother. So it felt natural to write the book this way, from inside the narrator's world. My working title for the book was The Chicken Diaries. It provoked a lot of laughter; I think people imagined the chickens themselves keeping diaries. But it worked for me, as a reminder of how the story operates, close to the narrator's present moment and thinking.

Brood has some things in ...

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Books by this Author

Books by Jackie Polzin at BookBrowse
Brood jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Jackie Polzin but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Jhumpa Lahiri

    Jhumpa Lahiri

    Jhumpa Lahiri, a bilingual writer and translator, is the Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Barnard College (Columbia University). She received the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Brood

    Try:
    Whereabouts
    by Jhumpa Lahiri

  • Lydia Millet

    Lydia Millet

    Lydia Millet is the author of A Children's Bible, a finalist for the National Book Award and a New York Times Top Ten book of the Year. Her first work of short fiction, Love in Infant Monkeys, was a finalist for the Pulitzer ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Brood

    Try:
    Dinosaurs
    by Lydia Millet

We recommend 7 similar authors

View all 7 Read-Alikes

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BookBrowse Book Club

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    The Ghostwriter
    by Julie Clark
    From the instant New York Times bestselling author of The Last Flight and The Lies I Tell comes a dazzling new thriller.

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