University of Baltimore Prof. Marion Winik continues to receive accolades for the new edition of her memoir First Comes Love, published 30 years ago at the start of a period of deeply personal books that defined the times. Now, as the book becomes available in both print and audiobook form, and Winik is speaking out about its impact, media critics are talking about the work as a reflection of popular culture in the 1980s and '90s.
"Turns out the mid-1990s was a boom time for women memoirists writing about their shocking pasts like Mary Karr's 'The Liar's Club' and Elizabeth Wurtzel's 'Prozac Nation,'" writes columnist Leslie Gray Streeter in The Baltimore Banner. "Winik was told her book had to be marketed as nonfiction 'because the story is so crazy, it has to be asserted that it's true,' she said."
Declaring the book "groundbreaking," The Banner notes that First Comes Love's new edition came about from a conversation between Prof. Winik and a UBalt student, who expressed disappointment that the book had never received an audio version. Winik contacted the book's publisher, who recognized the marketability of a memoir that made waves when it was first released.
"The renewed attention has allowed Winik, now 67, to revisit the person she used to be, and remind herself why she committed her story to words in the first place," Streeter writes.
On WYPR's Midday show, host Tom Hall interviewed Winik on the Jan. 6 edition.
First Comes Love will be the subject of a conversation between Winik and acclaimed Baltimore author Laura Lippman at The Ivy Bookshop on Thursday, Jan. 8 beginning at 6 p.m.