Kate Braverman, a poet, novelist and short story writer "whose work was fueled by a sprawling Los Angeles," died October 13, the Los Angeles Times reported. Braverman "wrote about extreme female protagonists and her oscillating love and loathing for the city that raised her.... She published several books of poetry and countless short stories," including "Mrs. Jordan's Summer Vacation," winner of the Editor's Choice Raymond Carver Short-Story Award; and "Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta," which earned her the 1992 O. Henry Award.
City Lights Books, which published Braverman's last collection of stories, A Good Day for Seppuku (2018), tweeted Monday: "We're sad to report that Kate Braverman has died. She was 69 years old. We strongly urge you to read this piece by @xwaldie in the New Yorker about her razor-sharp & versatile work."
The L.A. Times noted that Braverman "is perhaps best known for her fever dream novel Lithium for Medea" (1979), in which she describes the city as "white and half dead... a rented city... Los Angeles is the great waiting room of the world," a hellscape with a "deformed sun" that spits "sick orange blood on the pavement."
Her other books include Frantic Transmissions to and from Los Angeles: An Accidental Memoir, winner of the 2006 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize; Palm Latitudes (1988); The Incantation of Frida K. (2001); Lullaby for sinners (1981); Postcard from August (1990); Small Craft Warnings (1998) and Wonders of the West (1993).
"She was vivid and intense. She was uncompromising," said novelist Janet Fitch about her mentor, whom she described as "a high priestess of literature." Fitch also tweeted: "Some women change your life forever. Kate was absolute dedication to art, to literature. She would abide nothing less."
In 1989, Braverman told the L.A. Times: "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."