Category: Members

Edna In The Desert is Maddy Lederman’s first novel, released by Electio Publishing. Her writing has appeared in The Huffington Post, The LA Times and The Sun Runner, a magazine about California deserts. She has an MFA in Theater from Brooklyn College, lives in Brooklyn, NY and works in the art department for films and TV shows, recently on Darren Aronofsky’s Noah and The Amazing Spiderman 2.

How long have you been a member of the WNBA-NYC? How did you get involved with the organization?
About a year. When my first novel, Edna In The Desert, was almost finished, I was looking for ways to learn about publishing.

Where did the idea for Edna come from and when can readers expect to purchase it?
It’s available now at electiopublishing.com and practically everywhere online as an e-book or paperback. I’ve spent a lot of time in the Mojave Desert and the idea for Edna In The Desert started out as a short film. I kept seeing this family in a car on a desert highway. Cars can be pressure cookers for intense situations (I’m working on a collection of micro-stories that take place in cars). In this story, a bratty, Los Angeles thirteen year-old finds out she’s going to be left with her grandparents for the summer. Her grandparents are like people I had interviewed for a local magazine. They had no cell phone service or internet and lived in the middle of nowhere. It was so remote, I wondered how a modern, city kid could stand it. Eventually Edna In The Desert became a short story (now chapter one of the book). I read it at Desert Stories, a spoken word event in Joshua Tree, CA, and then it was published in The Sun Runner, a magazine about California deserts. So many people wanted to know what was going to happen to Edna, it inspired me to write the book!

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