The Audio Series: Cris Mazza

Our audio series "The Authors Read. We Listen." is an incredibly special one for us. Hatched in a NYC club during BEA week, this feature requires more work of the author than any of the ones that have come before. And that makes it all the more sweeter when you see, or rather, hear them read excerpts from their own novels, in their own voices, the way their stories were meant to be heard.


Today, we kick off the Cris Mazza "Something Wrong With Her" Blog Tour with a special audio clip of Cris reading an excerpt from her memoir. 


Cris is the author of a dozen books of fiction, mostly recently Waterbaby (Soft Skull Press 2007). Her other titles include the critically acclaimed Is It Sexual Harassment Yet?, and the PEN Nelson Algren Award winning How to Leave a Country. She also has a collection of personal essays, Indigenous: Growing Up Californian. Mazza has been the recipient of an NEA Fellowship and three Illinois Arts Council literary awards. A native of Southern California, Mazza grew up in San Diego County. Currently she lives 50 miles west of Chicago. She is a professor in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Click on the soundcloud link to hear Something Wrong With Her, as read by the author:







The word on Something Wrong With Her:

Something Wrong With Her is a groundbreaking “real-time” memoir by author Cris Mazza that begins with Mazza’s anorgasmia – the inability to have an orgasm. Research suggests that at least 75% of women cannot reach orgasms through vaginal intercourse, and upwards of 15% are completely anorgasmic. The surplus of contemporary sexual memoirs would have us believe otherwise. But Something Wrong With Her is not a book about overcoming anorgasmia. Rather, it is a poignant memoir about a girl who didn’t feel the sexual awakenings she knew she was supposed to feel, and about the boy who loved her nonetheless. Thirty years later Cris Mazza went back to find that boy, now a man, only to discover that he’d never stopped yearning for her. Worse, in an attempt to numb his feelings for her, he’d sealed himself into an abusive marriage. Something Wrong With Her is an astonishing real-time testimony of a couple’s reconnection while — and within — the writing of this memoir, and their candid wrestling with 30-year-old memories, questions and regrets.

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We are also giving away one signed copy of the book

to a lucky US resident!

All you have to do is comment on this post to enter to win, 

(be sure to include an email address so I can contact!) 

Winner will be chosen randomly on April 4th.

Best of luck to everyone!