Pamela Greenberg, Writer, Poet, Translator
In the Works
I am currently working on, or seeking representation for a number of projects:
1. MEMOIR: A girl camps across the country with her parents who are leaving New York for California, drawn by the hippie dream. They pick up stoned hitchhikers, go to beaches where people swim naked, and listen to Simon and Garfunkel. The hills smell of eucalyptus and sparkle in the sun, but darkness starts to creep in along with the fog. Soon the parents separate, and the dad starts to paper his wall with quotes from every one from Mahatma Ghandi to Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. He starts proclaiming he's Jesus, and arrives at the house in the middle of the night, pounding on the door, threatening to kill the whole family. The memoir continues into the present day and my own struggle to live in the wake of trauma.
2. YOUNG ADULT: Coleman, who happens to be black, and Steven, who happens to be white, used to be best friends. They watched high school baseball together and played video games. But suddenly Coleman starts ghosting him and responding to all his questions with grunts. He no longer laughs, and has gone from being a straight A student to not caring about school. Steven, who is obsessed with zombies, wonders if maybe, just maybe, his friend has become one. Meanwhile, Steven's dealing with Karla, who's he's known forever and who's tougher than he is, but who he's starting to develop feelings for. And he's struggling to figure out how to deal with a lie he told his mom that just keeps getting worse.
3. SHORT STORIES: A collection of short stories that takes place in upstate New York and includes: a woman with an addict boyfriend who confides to an elderly neighbor who she later realizes has dementia, an architect struggling to imagine a home for others while his own marriage is crumbling, a drunk boy at a roller derby who falls for a girl only to be mocked by her friends, a bunch of teenagers at a quarry wrestling with their own ghosts and the myth of a ghost who haunts the landscape, a woman who takes an art class and finds a version of herself in a younger participant who she tries to save, an aging woman who goes with her husband to the VFW and to her surprise develops feelings for another woman, a man in recovery who, while selling used junk at a flea market, encounters a woman he slept with while in a blackout.
4. POETRY: A collection of poems both heart wrenching and comical from the point of view of a fictional character, Ezekiel, who is well intentioned, but struggling to find sanity in the modern day United States.