I am so disappointed that I did not know about Katherine Vaz teaching at Baruch,. That would have been such a great opportunity to read the book, ask questions about it right from the author, and ask the author about some tricks she uses in writing. We had a small chance to ask this writer several questions at the event and next day in class, which was nice.

I read some of her stories and they seemed to me gloomy and sad, as if the writer went through all these difficulties in life herself. In one story, the death of her father was mentioned, and she passed on to the reader a very suppressed, horrible feeling.

Not only is she brilliant at composing the story and telling it to us, but she also knows how to capture the reader. I loved the stylistic devices she uses. She is all about metaphors and similes: for instance, when she writes about the imprisoned mother and son, she describes the mother as very attached to son, hugging him all the time, and she has “hands like ropes,” or “her skin was perfect, soft as an eggplant,” or “eggs smooth as river stones.”

Sometimes she uses two words that do not normally go together, making her own oxymoron: so, in her stories a character can drink a voice, or someone can be scarlet with anger, or the moon can excerpt a round cataract.

This kind of writing is based on the skillfulness of using a word and changing it, so that the reader is stunned, shocked and thus made to remember the author.

I wish Baruch had more opportunities to bring writers like Katherine Vaz so that even those students who miss a space in the class have another great writer to register for.