Summer Brenner was raised in Georgia and drifted northeast to Boston, over the Atlantic, out west to New Mexico, and eventually to the Bay Area where she has been a long-time resident.
Currently, she works in Richmond, California, focusing on literacy and youth. She is author of a dozen books of poetry and fiction, including the noir thriller from PM, I-5, A Novel of Crime, Transport, and Sex; and short story collection, My Life in Clothes. Forthcoming from PM is Nearly Nowhere, first published in France by Gallimard's la serie noire.
Works for young people include Richmond Tales, Lost Secrets of the Iron Triangle, winner of 2010 Historic Preservation award from the City of Richmond; and recently from Reach & Teach/PM, IVY, Homeless in San Francisco, Silver Award Winner for the Children's Literary Classics Book Awards in the category of pre-teen fiction.
Ivy, Homless in San Francisco also was recently awarded the Bronze medal in the Moonbeam Children's Book Awards, in the category of pre-teen fiction.
Click here for an interview with Summer on KPFK or get the podcast of her interview with David Wilk on Writers Cast.
Nearly Nowhere Author: Summer Brenner Publisher: PM Press/Switchblade ISBN: 978-1-60486-306-2 Published August 2012 Format: Paperback Size: 8 by 5.5 Page count: 200 Pages Subjects: Fiction $15.95
With her teen daughter Ruby, Kate Ryan moved to the secluded village of Zamora to have a quiet life off the grid beside her poor neighbors, the Spanish farmers of northern New Mexico. When Kate invites the wrong drifter home, the delicate peace of her domain shatters. Troy is the bad smell that refuses to go away.
Finally, Kate bribes him into leaving with a few hundred dollars and a ride to Santa Fe. In town, Troy hustles his way into another woman's life and returns to Zamora to prove he's not the man Kate thinks he is. No? He's way worse. After Troy is shot and Ruby disappears, the village erupts with fear and confusion.
Like a Greek chorus, the Spanish farmers camp outside the Ryan house and offer their comments, both quixotic and profound, on mayhem, murder, invasion, conquest, and drought. Meanwhile, coming and going are the sheriff, the local doctor, Ruby's friend, his mother, and the clinic's nurse, each with a different theory on Troy's assailant, Ruby's kidnapping, and the discovery of an unidentified corpse. Steadfast throughout is Kate's love for her daughter and her willingness to risk everything to find her.
Brenner writes in prose as stark and beautiful as New Mexico's landscape where violence bursts in starts and fits like the summer monsoons. All the more terrifying for its understated brutality, Nearly Nowhere is filled with ominous surprises as it travels the back roads from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to Idaho’s Bitterroot Wilderness.
Praise:
“With her beautifully wrought sentences and dialogue that bring characters alive, Summer Brenner weaves a gripping and dark tale of mysterious crime based in spiritually and naturally rich northern New Mexico and beyond.” —Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of Roots of Resistance: A History of Land Tenure in New Mexico
“Summer Brenner's Nearly Nowhere has the breathless momentum of the white-water river some of her characters must navigate en route from a isolated village in New Mexico to a neo-Nazi camp in Idaho. A flawed but loving single mother, a troubled teen girl, a good doctor with a secret, a murderous sociopath—this short novel packs enough into its pages to fight well above its weight class.” —Michael Harris, author of The Chieu Hoi Saloon
"It’s because the characters are so richly drawn, the writing so elegant, the rural Western landscape so exquisitely described, that you don’t realize at first what Brenner has done to you; how she’s loaded up the dory, strapped you in, and loosed you down this terrifying river. And, then, of course, it’s too late. Nearly Nowhere is a beautiful and chilling novel." —Benjamin Whitmer, author of Pike
Ivy, Homeless in San Francisco Author: Summer Brenner Illustrator: Brian Bowes Publisher: PM Press / Reach And Teach ISBN: 978-1-60486-317-8 Published June 2011 Format: Paperback Size: 9 by 6 Page count: 176 Pages Subjects: Fiction, Social Science (Ages 10 and up) $15.00
In this empathetic tale of hope, understanding, and the importance of family, readers face the difficult issue of poverty and the many hardships of being homeless through an inspiring young heroine named Ivy. Ivy is the story of a young girl who finds herself homeless on the streets of San Francisco when she and her father, Poppy, are evicted from his artist loft.
Struggling to survive day to day, Ivy and Poppy befriend a dog who takes them to the ramshackle home of quirky siblings Eugenia and Oscar Orr, marking the start of some amazing adventures. Blending a spoonful of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist with a dash of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City and a few pinches of the Adventures of Lassie, Ivy's tale will appeal to young readers as well as give adults material to discuss with children.
Praise:
“Lolitas, Oliver Twists and Huckleberry Finns live on, and now, Ivy’s tale of hope lives right alongside them.” —Robin Clewly, San Francisco Chronicle
“A quirky, clever story about a young girl’s journey through the streets and homeless shelters of San Francisco… Ivy is fictional, but her circumstances are honest reflections of life for the many homeless children.” —San Jose Mercury News
"All the parts fit in so well that I almost forgot that I was reading a book. It was as if I was watching a movie and could hear their thoughts… I think this book is great for all ages. Ivy is both fun and moving." —Anna Moss, age 12 Boston, MA
"Ivy was one of the best books I have ever read. I liked it because it taught an important lesson of faith and trust." —Rachel Hodge, age 13. Savannah, GA
I-5: A Novel of Crime, Transport and Sex By Summer Brenner Published April 2009 ISBN: 978-1-60486-019-1 Size: 5 by 8 Page count: 256 Pages Subjects: Fiction, Thriller $15.95
A novel of crime, transport, and sex, I-5 tells the bleak and brutal story of Anya and her journey north from Los Angeles to Oakland on the interstate that bisects the Central Valley of California.
Anya is the victim of a deep deception. Someone has lied to her; and because of this lie, she is kept under lock and key, used by her employer to service men, and indebted for the privilege. In exchange, she lives in the United States and fantasizes on her future freedom. Or as she remarks to a friend, "Would she rather be fucking a dog...or living like a dog?" In Anya’s world, it’s a reasonable question.
Much of I-5 transpires on the eponymous interstate. Anya travels with her “manager” and driver from Los Angeles to Oakland. It’s a macabre journey: a drop at Denny’s, a bad patch of tule fog, a visit to a “correctional facility,” a rendezvous with an organ grinder, and a dramatic entry across Oakland’s city limits.
Praise:
"It has a quality very rare in literature: a subtle, dark humor that’s only perceivable when one goes deep into the heart of this world’s absurd tragedy, or tragic absurdity." -- R. Crumb
"Completely outside my normal reading pattern, I found myself staying up one night with a quick-read page-turner: Summer Brenner’s I-5, a hard-boiled feminist thriller that tells a seamy story of a young Russian sex slave’s struggle to survive and escape as she’s being trafficked up the interstate in California. Well written, without a superfluous word, it’s a big chase, practically a movie on the page; I can’t believe some major action director hasn’t ponied up a wheelbarrow full of money for the rights." --Ned Sublette, writer, anthropologist, musician, performer
"Insightful, innovative and riveting. After its lyrical beginning inside Anya's head, I-5 shifts momentum into a rollicking gangsters-on-the-lam tale that is in turns blackly humorous, suspenseful, heartbreaking and always populated by intriguing characters. Anya is a wonderful, believable heroine, her tragic tale told from the inside out, without a shred of sentimental pity, which makes it all the stronger. A twisty, fast-paced ride you won't soon forget." --Denise Hamilton, author of the L.A.Times bestseller The Last Embrace.
"I'm in awe. I-5 moves so fast you can barely catch your breath. It's as tough as tires, as real and nasty as road rage, and best of all, it careens at breakneck speed over as many twists and turns as you'll find on The Grapevine. What a ride! I-5's a hard-boiled standout." --Julie Smith, editor of New Orleans Noir and author of the Skip Langdon and Talba Wallis crime novel series
"In I-5, Summer Brenner deals with the onerous and gruesome subject of sex trafficking calmly and forcefully, making the reader feel the pain of its victims. The trick to forging a successful narrative is always in the details, and I-5 provides them in abundance. This book bleeds truth--after you finish it, the blood will be on your hands." --Barry Gifford, author, poet and screenwriter
"Her prose style is a mirror reflection of the interstate: parched, fast, and tense, with an emotional timbre that matches the velocity of the plot." --East Bay Express
For a calendar of speaking events, please click here
The Latest News:
The Book Launch Party for “Ivy” Last week was the book launch party for my first published YA Book, Ivy: Homeless in San Francisco published by Reach and Teach, and PM Press. Read on for an excellent account by Artist and Illustrator Brian Bowes.
Bay Area Switchblade Launch Last night near downtown Berkeley, a small Victorian house was crowded with well-wishers for the launch of Switchblade Books and the publication of The Jook by Gary Phillips and I-5 by Summer Brenner. Usually, a sizeable party would spill onto the...
Behind I-5 MARCH 2009 The seed for I-5 was planted by a local news story: the 1999 death of an East Indian teenager, asphyxiated in a Berkeley apartment by a leaky gas pipe. News of the tragedy was unveiled by two persistent high-school journalists, Meg Gree...
A Delightful Book with an Important Message about Homelessness Children's Literary Classics Monday July 4th, 2011
Ivy, Homeless in San Francisco, is a delightful book with an important message. Following her mother's death, young Ivy and her father are evicted from their home in San Francisco. Ivy does her best to keep her homelessness a secret to most of her friends at school; yet, her secret is not easily kept. Ivy and her father, Poppy, encounter many wonderful and caring people as they struggle to survive. But they also encounter many people who make inaccurate assumptions about them, often causing them great harm in their quest to rise from the desperation of their current situation. Often witty, occasionally heart-wrenching, this book offers insight into the lives of those who must endure living in shelters and on the streets.
Summer Brenner's account of a homeless girl and her father living on the streets is both revealing and heartwarming.
Interview with Summer Brenner By David Wilk Writerscast
This is a slim novel that packs a pretty powerful punch. Summer Brenner was best known to me as a poet, but it turns out she has been writing fiction for quite some time. She has a political interest, as this novel demonstrates, but it is not a tract. It’s a sensitive portrayal of an Eastern European woman who has been tricked into coming to America, where she has been enslaved in a money for sex ring that makes a business out of the correlation between the desires of women to escape the misery of their lives and men who are willing to pay for sex of all kinds with women, whose real lives they care nothing about.
I-5 by Summer Brenner is the second release from the Switchblade imprint of PM Press, and all I can say is wow. I don’t know if this one is on people’s radar screens, but it should be.
I-5 is a wholly original piece of dark fiction that never goes where you expect it to and ventures into uncharted waters. It’s uncompromising in ways that should be exceptionally appealing to readers of dark fiction. I-5 is as tough a crime tale as you’re likely to find anywhere.
Summer Brenner's I-5 is a grim and gripping noir novel about the sex slave trade: its victims, its perpetrators, and its ability to flourish in the shadowy outcrops of civilized life. Under the guise of business, Anya and other girls from Eastern Europe are plucked from the streets and brought to the U.S. by promises of work and help for their families. Kupkin, manager of the evil empire, holds them indentured and enslaved without hope of escape until all debts are paid off. He ruminates on the care he takes of his girls and his business: "forty girls have passed through orientation. Nine have worked their way out of the system after a production period of five years. Two have died...This latest enterprise has transformed Kupkin from rich to extremely wealthy."
Brenner braves a subject matter that is not easy to embrace, and she manages to create a character that is neither cliché nor uninspiring. I-5 moves at a clipped pace towards its conclusion, and the reader is wholly invested in finding out how Anya finally resolves her life.
I have always thought of Summer Brenner as a poet who sometimes writes fiction, so I was surprised to see in the front matter to I-5: A Novel of Crime, Transport, and Sex, that Brenner has published six novels to just two volumes of verse, and that she hasn’t published a book of poems in 32 years. Having now read – and completely enjoyed – I-5, I still think Summer Brenner is a poet, but one with notable narrative skills & a deep commitment both to her characters & to justice. I-5 is an effective novel, tho certainly not perfect, and one that would translate easily to the big screen. It has all the elements: a tough-as-nails hooker heroine who is also the protagonist & very much the “good guy,” plus a variety of secondary characters, minor Russian mafia wannabes, other prostitutes, a trucker with an illicit cargo, prison guards with their own demons & secrets, and a villainous capitalist trying to control everyone in his orbit. It has an ending that is both very much what the reader will be hoping for & yet almost entirely a surprise.
Book Review: I-5 By the NerdOfNoir June 18th, 2009
For a novel about a Russian sex slave, Summer Brenner’s I-5 sure as shit is a lot of fucking fun. And it’s not fun solely because the Nerd is a degenerate “pre-vert” (though that doesn’t hurt), no sir. This shit is a blast because Brenner’s chosen to make her prostitute protagonist a spunky, hard-edged survivor heroine instead of a pitiful victim. Anya is indeed a sex slave working off her “debt” to the rat bastard her tricked her into indentured sexual servitude - there’s no getting around that shit - but she’s also somewhat secure in the knowledge that she’s just a sex act or two away from freedom.
Summer Brenner regularly swims long distances in Berkeley’s public pools. She is also an accomplished author who writes as gracefully as she swims.
Her latest book, I-5: A Novel of Crime, Transport, and Sex (Oakland: PM Press, 2009), is a novel about sex trafficking along one of California’s major highways.
It is not at all sleazy or pornographic, as its subject may suggest, nor is it noir fiction, as its misleading sensational cover implies, and it is not a “new mystery,” as shelved at Moe’s. It is literary fiction told from the point of view of Anya, a Russian immigrant, falsely lured to the United States for legitimate work as a clerk or waitress, only to find herself a sex slave. Anya is savvy and sensitive, plotting her own escape even as she endures the unpleasant toils of her forced servitude...
Sex Traffickers on Interstate 5: Berkeley writer brings prostitution into the domain of hard-boiled crime fiction--and feminism. By Rachel Swan East Bay Express
Anya may be a noir protagonist, but she has little in common with the Philip Marlowes and Sam Spades who inhabited traditional pulp fiction. She's 23 years old; Russian-born but stuck in the United States (first in Atlanta, then Los Angeles, and finally, Oakland); flinty on the outside but soft and pliant within. She's a sex worker who slaves for a Russian pimp and becomes an accomplice in her own exploitation. As a moral center, she's dubious. But as a noir character, she's a feminist — albeit one whose actions stem entirely from her will to survive. At any rate, Anya is a departure from the gumshoe investigators and blood-sucking widows who predate her...
You should be reading Summer Brenner The Economist December 13, 2010
Given the many virtues of this book, it is puzzling to see it released by a small (albeit reputable) publisher. It is something that fans of Nora Ephron would be elated to discover, if they were to discover it, and which all bookstores and libraries should stock. It shouldn't be long before Ms Brenner finally gets the attention she deserves. (Her previous novel, a slim noir volume about the sex trade in California called "I-5", was also brilliant.) But until then, readers are advised to scoop up her work wherever they can find it.
