About Brook

Paradise Lust (Grove Press, 2011) is Brook Wilensky-Lanford’s first book. Her essays and reviews have appeared in Salon, The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Huffington Post and other publications. (You can see a complete list below.) She is fascinated by the way ancient mythology pops up in our modern lives, turning seemingly small questions–where is the Garden of Eden?–into vast existential quests.  Brook stalks these myths, not in order to ‘bust’ them, but as a private investigator with a long memory and an open mind.

Brook received her B. A. in Theater and Religious Studies from Wesleyan University, and an M.F.A. in Nonfiction Writing from Columbia University, where she won the Arthur J. Harris Memorial Prize; and a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship funded by the National Endowment of the Arts. She grew up on beautiful Mount Desert Island, Maine, lived in New York City for ten years, and recently migrated to  Jersey City, New Jersey, where she lives with her boyfriend and two cats.

Essays Online:

In Print:

  • “Adam and Eve At Home in Ohio,” The Common, Spring 2011 (inaugural issue)
  • “Eden vs. Eden,” in Exquisite Corpse Annual #2, Feb. 2, 2010