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June 7, 2011 - Wade Rouse "It's All Relative"

 

 

Wade Rouse is 

a “laugh-out-loud-funny” (NBC’s Today Show), “wise, witty, wicked” (USA Today) writer whose humor “successfully imports a steady current of panic, a la Erma Bombeck” (The Onion). Rouse is a hilarious “David Sedaris meets Dave Barry” hybrid (Library Journal) who “beautifully combines humor and pathos” (Out Magazine), and has quickly established himself as “an original writer and impressive new voice” (The Washington Post) whose “combination of honest emotion and evocative prose is destined to be a hit!” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

 

Wade Rouse is the author of three, critically-acclaimed memoirs, including America’s

 Boy(Dutton/2006), Confessions of A Prep School Mommy Handler (Harmony/2007), and his latest, the bestselling At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream: Misadventures in Search of the Simple Life (Harmony/2009).

At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream chronicles the misadventures of two neurotic urbanites who quit their jobs, and leave the city, cable, couture and consumerism behind in order to move to the Michigan woods and recreate a modern-day Walden. At Least in the City Somone Would Hear Me Scream was an IndieBound (Midwest and Great Lakes) bestseller, 2009 Best Book of the Year “Contributors Selection” by B&N, and named a Summer Must-Read by NBC’s Today Show, Detroit Free-Press, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Petersburg Times, Grand Rapids Press, Out Magazine, MetroSource Magazine, Chicago Magazine, Chicago Public Radio, Michigan Public Radio, St. Louis Magazine, Frontiers Magazine, among others.

Rouse’s first memoir, America’s Boy, which chronicles his life growing up gay in the Ozarks thanks to the unconditional love from an unconventional family, was named by Border’s as a Best Book (Literary Memoir) of 2006, “A Best Book of 2006” by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as well as a 2006 BookSense selection by the nation’s independent booksellers.

His second memoir, Confessions of A Prep School Mommy Handler, about his tenure as PR director at an elite prep school where he quickly learns his “real job” is to cater to a Lilly Pulitzer-clad clique of “Mean Mommies,” was selected by both Barnes & Noble and Target as a Breakout Book/Bestseller, and hailed as “funny” by Entertainment Weekly. The memoir is about job discrimination and the incredible pressures facing faculty, students and parents today.

Rouse was a contributor to the humorous anthology on working in retail, The Customer Is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles (Counterpoint-Soft Skull Press). Rouse’s essay on working at Sears after years of wearing Husky’s was selected to kick off the collection.

Rouse is a contributing humor columnist for Metrosource magazine, the largest gay magazine in NYC and LA, and the third largest in America. His essays and articles have appeared in numerous national magazines and online publications – including Forbes.com, the number one business site on the web which reaches nearly 10 million readers – as well as on CBC Radio One’s popular “Definitely Not the Opera” in Canada, Chicago Public Radio and Michigan Public Radio, and he has spoke, lectured and taught writing seminars around the country. Rouse is represented by the Random House Speakers Bureau – alongside such luminaries as Ken Burns, Jay McInerney, Richard Russo, Jane Smiley, Gay Talese, Roy Blount Jr., and Lisa See – and is available for select readings and lectures.  To inquire about a possible appearance, please visit www.rhspeakers.com or call 212-572-2013. 

He earned his B.A. in communications (with honors) from Drury College (now University) and his master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, where his emphasis was in magazine writing and publishing.

Rouse’s fourth book, It’s All Relative: A Memoir of Two Families, Three Dogs, 34 Holidays and 50 Boxes of Wine, will publish February 2011 from Harmony/Random House. The book deals with America’s obsession with picture-perfect holidays and looks at the evolution of family through the lens of different holidays.

He is also serving as editor of and contributor to a humorous dog anthology, I’m Not the Biggest Bitch in This Relationship!, (NAL/Penguin) which will benefit The Humane Society of the United States and other local/national animal shelters/causes, and feature some of America’s favorite funny writers and comics, including Carol Leifer, Jen Lancaster, Laurie Notaro, Bruce Cameron, Merrill Markoe, Alec Mapa, Jeff Marx, Rita Mae Brown, Jill Conner Brown and many others. It will publish in summer or fall 2011.

Rouse lives on the coast of Michigan, where – in between beach weather and blizzards – he writes memoirs and battles for bed space with his partner, Gary, and their beloved mutts, Marge and Mabel.

$23.99
ISBN-13: 9780307718716
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Crown, 2/2011
How come the only thing my family tree ever grows is nuts?” Wade Rouse attempts to answer that question in his blisteringly funny new memoir by looking at the yearly celebrations that unite us all and bring out the very best and worst in our nearest and dearest. Family is truly the only gift that keeps on giving—namely, the gifts of dysfunction and eccentricity— and Wade Rouse’s family has been especially charitable: His chatty yet loving mother dresses her son as a Ubangi tribesman, in blackface, for Halloween in the rural Ozarks; his unconventional engineer of a father buries his children’s Easter eggs; his marvelously Martha Stewart–esque partner believes Barbie is his baby; his garage-sale obsessed set of in-laws are convinced they can earn more than Warren Buffett by selling their broken lamps and Nehru jackets; his mutt Marge speaks her own language; and his oddball collection of relatives includes a tipsy Santa Claus with an affinity for showing off his jingle balls. In the end, though, the Rouse House gifted Wade with love, laughter, understanding, superb comic timing, and a humbling appreciation for humiliation. Whether Wade dates a mime on his birthday to overcome his phobia of clowns or outruns a chubchasing boss on Secretary’s Day, he captures our holidays with his trademark self-deprecating humor and acerbic wit. He paints a funny, sad, poignant, and outlandish portrait of an an all-too-typical family that will have you appreciating—or bemoaning—your own and shrieking in laughter.

$14.00
ISBN-13: 9780307451910
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Broadway, 6/2010
We all dream it. Wade Rouse actually did it. Finally fed up with the frenzy of city life and a job he hates, Wade Rouse decided to make either the bravest decision of his life or the worst mistake since his botched Ogilvie home perm: to uproot his life and try, as Thoreau did some 160 years earlier, to "live a plain, simple life in radically reduced conditions." In this rollicking and hilarious memoir, Wade and his partner, Gary, leave culture, cable, and consumerism behind and strike out for rural Michigan–a place with fewer people than in their former spinning class. There, Wade discovers the simple life isn’t so simple. Battling blizzards, bloodthirsty critters, and nosy neighbors equipped with night-vision goggles, Wade and his spirit, sanity, relationship, and Kenneth Cole pointy-toed boots are sorely tested with humorous and humiliating frequency. And though he never does learn where his well water actually comes from or how to survive without Kashi cereal, he does discover some things in the woods outside his knotty-pine cottage in Saugatuck, Michigan, that he always dreamed of but never imagined he’d find–happiness and a home. At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream is a sidesplitting and heartwarming look at taking a risk, fulfilling a dream, and finding a home–with very thick and very dark curtains.

$13.95
ISBN-13: 9780307382719
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Broadway, 8/2008
At an elite prep school, the devil wears Lilly Pulitzer pink. When Wade Rouse, who grew up more Hee-Haw than Dynasty, was hired as the director of publicity at the prestigious Tate Academy, he quickly discovered his real job: to make the very pretty, very rich, very mean mommies of the elite students very happy. Enter Wade’s VIP volunteer and perfectly coiffed nightmare, former beauty queen and sports star Katherine Isabelle Ludington—Kitsy to her friends. In between designing Louis Vuitton–inspired reunion invitations, dressing as Ronald Reagan for Halloween, and surviving surprise Botox parties, Wade tries to tame Kitsy and her pink Lilly Pulitzer–clad posse while retaining a shred of self-esteem. Following a year in the life of the super rich and super spoiled, Confessions of a Prep School Mommy Handler is hilarious, heartbreaking, and deliciously catty.

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