Tell Me One Thing by Kerri Schlottman on January 31, 2023
Genres: Fiction / City Life, Fiction / Coming of Age
Pages: 216
Outside a rural Pennsylvania motel, nine-year-old Lulu smokes a cigarette while sitting on the lap of a trucker. Recent art grad Quinn is passing through town and captures it. The photograph, later titled "Lulu & the Trucker," launches Quinn's career, escalating her from a starving artist to a renowned photographer. In a parallel life, Lulu fights to survive a volatile home, growing up too quickly in an environment wrought with drug abuse and her mother's prostitution. Decades later, when Quinn has a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of Art and "Lulu & the Trucker" has sold at auction for a record-breaking amount, Lulu is surprised to find the troubling image of her young self in the newspaper. She attends an artist talk for the exhibition with one question in mind for Quinn: Why didn't you help me all those years ago? Tell Me One Thing is a portrait of two Americas, examining power, privilege, and the sacrifices one is willing to make to succeed. Traveling through the 1980s to present day, it delves into New York City's free-for-all grittiness while exposing a neglected slice of the struggling rust belt.
Today’s spotlight is for author Kerri Schlottman and her new release Tell Me One Thing! When reading the introduction to Tell Me One Thing, I was brought back to a book I read about a family that lived in the hills of Appalachia. A grim, isolated life that takes a tremendous amount of grit and determination to rise out of. Maybe a bit of luck too.
Here, Schlottman explores a story inspired by Mary Ellen Mark’s 1990 photograph, “Amanda and Her Cousin Amy.” Life is shaped through small moments and interactions. Tell Me One Thing uses the perspectives of Lulu and Quinn to navigate stories that play out in two seemingly separate Americas.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kerri Schlottman’s novel Tell Me One Thing is forthcoming from Regal House Publishing on January 31, 2023. Her writing has recently been featured in The Dillydoun Review, Belle Ombre, and Women Writers. Her work has been honored with the Dillydoun International Fiction Prize (second place), Dzanc Books Prize for Fiction (longlisted), and the 2021 University of New Orleans Press Lab Prize (semifinalist).
Kerri is a native Detroiter who has worked in the arts in New York City in various capacities since 2005, most recently at Creative Capital where she helped to fund new projects by artists, performers, filmmakers, and writers, including Maggie Nelson, Paul Beatty, and Dana Spiotta.