In Naomi Washer's novel Subjects We Left Out, a young American writer begins translating the work of a French poet whose book bears striking parallels to her own life. Diffident despite her talent and thoughtfulness, she struggles to understand and speak to the people closest to her, especially Alex: an exchange student from Florence, whom she feels intimately connected to despite his elusive, almost aloof disposition. As she travels through Paris and rural northeast France to meet with the poet and pursue an idea for her own book, she reckons with the distance between herself and Alex and begins to speak of the life she wants for herself. A meditation on what is often said and unsaid between people—in silence, translation, interpretation, and miscommunication—and an account of an artist coming into her own, Subjects We Left Out is a novel that sees the reader as correspondent, inviting us to hear and be heard, see and be seen, and summon the courage to speak clearly.

PRAISE FOR SUBJECTS WE LEFT OUT

When a mirror is anything but a blueprint, what to do when you find both yourself and your muse reflected therein? The parallel lives contained in Naomi Washer’s Subjects We Left Out, which takes translation to its most appropriate and dreamy level, as well as the confluence of love, language, and the seemingly impossible task of making oneself understood and seen while attempting to keep true to the other and the self, will make this text—this deep and emotive study of living in the life lines of unknowing and reaching—required reading for those readers who know that love is inseparable from what we say, and what we mean.

—Jenny Boully, author of Betwixt-and-Between: Essays on the Writing Life

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Naomi Washer is the author of TRAINSONGS (Greying Ghost Press), Phantoms (dancing girl press) and American Girl Doll (Ursus Americanus), and the translator of Sebastián Jiménez Galindo's Experimental Gardening Manual (Toad Press). Her work has appeared in Seneca Review, Passages North, Essay Daily, Asymptote, and other journals. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies from Yaddo, Vermont Studio Center, Studio Faire, Chateau Orquevaux, Numeroventi, and Columbia College Chicago where she earned her MFA in Nonfiction. In 2019, she was named one of 30 Writers to Watch by The Guild Literary Complex. She lives in Chicago where she is the editor-in-chief of Ghost Proposal.

Naomi Washer’s website: www.naomiwasher.com

Cover image by Laurence Briat.

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