Beverly Burch’s work has won the John Ciardi Prize, the Gival Poetry Prize and Lambda Literary Award and received several Pushcart nominations. She was a finalist for the Audre Lorde and the Housatonic Awards. Her most recent book is the novel, What You Don’t Know.
“A dazzling story, containing so much more than the width of its spine. Love is all over the place in this novel, and you don’t know which way it will turn next, and you stay glued to the page to find out. Burch reminds us that life is complex and dynamic and we really don’t know what might happen next.”
—Nina Schuyler, award-winning author of In This Ravishing World
“Dreamy and poetic, What You Don’t Know chronicles the awakening of two young women to the intertwined forces of grief and desire. Set in soul-freeing San Francisco and music-rich Nashville, this immersive novel deeply explores the hearts of its characters.”
—Lucy Jane Bledsoe, award winning author of Tell the Rest
Her next book will be a companion novel, No Guilty Secrets.
Essays have been published in many literary journals. She also writes a bimonthly a Substack: Rethinking…(Almost) Everything about the connections between literature, politics, culture and personal life.
Her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry draw on Southern roots, California culture, and the unconscious life. She grew up in Atlanta and has lived many years in Oakland, CA with her wife. Also a therapist, she had a private practice in Berkeley, CA for over 40 years until she closed it to allow more time for writing.
Personal thoughts about writing:
I’ve spent my life working the gaps between the conscious and unconscious, both as a writer and a therapist. I always loved words for their music, their meaning, and the way they point to places language doesn’t easily go.
Like therapy, writing is a personal exploration. One of my favorite thoughts (about revision, social change, personal evolution, whatever), paraphrased from a Buddhist teaching, is “Why is the road to change so long?” asked a follower. The master replied, “Because it has to go through you.”
Writing starts with a line, a memory, a scent, a tree, a political event, anything that gets going.