Background
Eisenstadt was born in Queens, New York and attended Bennington College, graduating in 1985.
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Jill Eisenstadt
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Her first novel, From Rockaway, published by Knopf in 1987, was submitted as her Master of Fine Arts thesis while at Columbia University.
Career
She was considered part of the "Literary Brat Pack" whose members included Bret Easton Ellis, Jay McInerney, and Tama Janowitz. Like her contemporaries at Bennington, she sometimes wrote in a sparse minimalist style influenced by such writers as Raymond Carver and Joan Didion. The book is a coming-of-age tale about four teenagers from Rockaway Beach in Queens.
The protagonist, Alex, escapes the working-class milieux with a scholarship to the fictional Camden College (a stand-in for Bennington) while her three friends work menial jobs and live in the now, spending summers lifeguarding and winters doing odd jobs.
Eventually the foursome reunites at a beachside party and comes to terms with their diverging lives. From Rockaway was translated into six languages and optioned by film director Sydney Pollack.
Eisenstadt followed with a second Knopf novel, Kiss Out, in 1991. In addition to her longer works, she has contributed short stories, essays, articles, interviews, and book reviews to such publications as The New York Times, Vogue, Mademoiselle, Elle, The Boston Review, New York Magazine, BKYLN (where she was an editor), BOMB and Glamour and to the anthologies ALTARED: Essays About Modern Weddings (Anchor Books 2007), Queens Noir (Askasic Books, 2007) and The Best Sex Writing 2008.
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Born
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Nationality
United States