Milkweed to Publish the Correspondence of Sarah Ruhl and Max Ritvo
We are thrilled to announce the acquisition of Letters from Max, a book including the correspondence between Max Ritvo and Sarah Ruhl.
Letters from Max tells the story of the relationship between a young poet diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma and a celebrated playwright who began as his teacher and became, over the course of an extended correspondence, his friend, and finally, his student.
Sarah Ruhl is one of America’s most frequently produced playwrights. Her plays include The Oldest Boy, In the Next Room, or the vibrator play, and The Clean House, among many others. She is also the author of 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write (Faber & Faber), a New York Times Notable Book of 2014. She is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Tony Award nominee, a recipient of the MacArthur “genius” grant and of, most recently, the 2016 Steinberg Prize.
In the collection’s introduction, Ruhl writes:
“Max had a heart as vast as that rare of all things—a real poet’s. At some point our roles of teacher and student were reversed, and Max became my teacher. I offer these letters in the spirit of giving Max’s teachings to more people. His words speak for themselves.”
Letters from Max is scheduled for fall 2018. SIGN UP to receive news and announcements about this book.
Max Ritvo
Max Ritvo (1990-2016) wrote Four Reincarnations in New York and Los Angeles over the course of a long battle with cancer. He was also the author of The Final Voicemails, edited and introduced by Louise Glück, and co-authored Letters from Max with Sarah Ruhl; both books were published posthumously. Ritvo’s poetry has appeared in the New Yorker and Poetry, among many other publications.
Sarah Ruhl
Sarah Ruhl’s plays include In the Next Room, or the vibrator play (Pulitzer Prize finalist, Tony Award nominee), and The Clean House (Pulitzer Prize finalist, winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize), among many others. She is recipient of the MacArthur “genius” grant, and of, most recently, the 2016 Steinberg Prize. She is currently on the faculty of the Yale School of Drama and lives in Brooklyn with her family.
The poems of this debut collection are dispatches from chemotherapy beds and hospitals and the loneliest spaces in the home. They are relentlessly embodied, communicating pain, violence, and loss—and yet they are also erotically, electrically attuned to possibility and desire.