FIVE SUMMER STORIES : KATE BRAVERMAN

“On one level, ‘Falling in October’ is a spoof of the art community; on another, it’s serious--a feminist post-nuclear story. These two

women are facing their own personal apocalypse: living with self-delusion, on the fringe of a major plague.

“I give a voice to characters outside the so-called American mainstream: Bohemian artists on the canals of Venice, women in the barrio and the new denizen of Los Angeles, the single mom. The character of a poet and a single mother is black humor in itself.

“Everything I write is about Los Angeles . . . the dark side of the tropics, the manic nature of the city, its mutant beauty, its power, the wildness of these self-created people.”