Goldie Goldbloom was born in Western Australia but currently lives in Chicago, Illinois with her eight children and her cat. She has a thing for lying on her back and watching the sky in winter. She also likes to walk barefoot in mud.

For close to twenty years, she worked as a teacher in both high school and elementary school, and as a particular kind of nerdy librarian. Some of her first jobs were cooking vast quantities of apple sauce, cracking open eggs for a bakery and weaving in the loose threads of cardigans. Of the various things she’s studied, she particularly enjoys botany and midwifery. She is a chassidic Jew. Studying at the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers was one of the highlights of her life and she hopes to continue on to do her Ph.D. Goldie is a mentor and writing teacher for queer and transgender youth.

Her short fiction has appeared in Narrative Magazine, StoryQuarterly and Prairie Schooner, and was anthologized in The Kid on the Karaoke Stage and Windy City Queer.

Her collection of short stories, You Lose These and other stories, was published by Fremantle Press.

Her non-fiction was anthologized in the groundbreaking Keep Your Wives Away from Them: Orthodox Women, Unorthodox Desires.

Her novel, The Paperbark Shoe, won both the AWP Novel Award (2008) and the Great Lakes College Association’s New Writer’s Award (2011). It is published by Picador in the US and UK, and has appeared in French translation.

Goldie Goldbloom chats with Lisa Guidarini about her first novel, The Paperbark Shoe.