Claire Berlinski

Welcome! I’m an American novelist, essayist, journalist, historian, travel writer, biographer, critic, editor, and consultant who lives amid a menagerie of adopted stray animals in Paris. I’m the author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/There-No-Alternative-Margaret-Thatcher/dp/0465031218/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">There is No Alternative:</a> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/There-No-Alternative-Margaret-Thatcher/dp/0465031218/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Why Margaret Thatcher Matters,</a> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Menace-Europe-Continents-Crisis-Americas/dp/1400097703/ref=la_B001HD1R06_1_3_twi_pap_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1490757652&amp;sr=1-3" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Menace in Europe:</a> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Menace-Europe-Continents-Crisis-Americas/dp/1400097703/ref=la_B001HD1R06_1_3_twi_pap_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1490757652&amp;sr=1-3" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Why the Continent’s crisis is America’s, Too</a>, and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Screw-Beautiful-Forevers-Middle-Class-Community-ebook/dp/B01EC7GV7W" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Screw the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Pleasant, Middle-Class Gated Community in Delhi</a>. I’ve also written two spy novels, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Loose-Lips-Claire-Berlinski/dp/0375509089/ref=la_B001HD1R06_1_4?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1490757652&amp;sr=1-4" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Loose Lips</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Lion-Eyes-Novel-Claire-Berlinski/dp/0345476174/ref=la_B001HD1R06_1_1_twi_pap_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1490757652&amp;sr=1-1" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Lion Eyes</a>. Before returning to Paris, I lived for a decade in Istanbul, where among other things I was the <a href="https://www.afpc.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">American Foreign Policy Council’s</a> senior fellow for Turkey. (I also wrote part of a graphic novel about my seven cats called <a href="https://www.catstantinople.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Catstantinople</a>.) You can learn <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_ebooks_1?ie=UTF8&amp;text=Claire+Berlinski&amp;search-alias=digital-text&amp;field-author=Claire+Berlinski&amp;sort=relevancerank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">more about me and the books I’ve written</a> on Amazon, or read about me on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/claireberlinski/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">LinkedIn</a>. You can find more of my journalism in <a href="https://claireberlinski.pressfolios.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">my portfolio on Pressfolios</a>. &nbsp; And you can turn to me for bespoke writing: No job too big or too small. Novels, screenplays, speeches, love letters, epic poetry, limericks, haiku, tersa rima, ballads, sonnets, tactful rejections (romantic or otherwise), ghostwritten wedding anniversary speeches, motivational speeches, ad copy, biographies, histories, autobiographies, memoirs, declarations of war, and funeral orations.

Free

Want to see what never made it to the final draft? Want to know how much it takes to turn a first draft into a book? People who join the Top Secret Director's Cut Tier will get occasional access to something I thought about publishing ... but then thought better of it. Or maybe my editor wouldn't let me say it.Maybe it will be a scene I cut out of one of my novels. Or a chapter I had to cut out of my book, or an article I never published, because it got overtaken by events. Or maybe an e-mail I drafted to blow off steam, but thought better of sending  when I sobered up. Find out what a writer's life is really like ... by having a look at the cutting room floor. One catch: You have to swear that it never goes beyond us. Some of this is perfectly innocuous, if perhaps badly written. Other stuff? Top Secret. If it ever gets out that I wrote these things, I'm toast. So if you sign up for this tier, I will ask you to sign a Vow of Omertà. (Oh, man: I'm actually excited for you. There is so much great junk lying around my computer you wouldn't believe it.)

Top Secret Director's Cut

You send me your name, your problem, and three words you associate with it. In return, you get a custom-made limerick. 

A Limerick Just For You

Do you know how hard it is to write a Villanelle? 
 
I do. That's why I've limited the number of people who can join this tier to ten.
 
If you become a Villanelle Level Patreon, you -- you! -- will receive a customized, nineteen-line poem with .... 
 
<ul>
<li>five tercets; </li>
<li>followed by a quatrain;</li>
<li>two refrains; </li>
<li>two repeating rhymes</li>
<li>the first and third line of the first tercet repeated, alternately ...</li>
</ul>
 
And if you order now, you'll get this one-time only Perfect Villanelle offer:
 
<ul>
<li>a final stanza that includes both repeated lines. </li>
</ul>
 
You get to choose the subject. Any subject. 
 
Why exactly would you want a villanelle? As Anna, my Patreon advisor, told me, I should always explain the benefits in bullet points: 
 
<ul>
<li>Best man? It's the perfect gift for a wedding speech. </li>
<li>Wedding anniversary? Nothing says, "I'm glad I married you" like a villanelle written by Claire Berlinski. (Although of course you can say you wrote it.)</li>
<li>You know how sometimes when you park at the grocery store, you come out and find that an idiot  parked so close to you that you can barely back out? Leave my villanelle on his windshield.   He'll never park antisocially again as long as he lives. </li>
<li>The Villanelle Ultimate: If this doesn't get you out of the friend zone, nothing will. Careful with this villanelle, though. Sometimes it works a little too well.</li>
</ul>
 
You can say you wrote it, too. I don't need the credit. It's your villanelle, to do with exactly as you please.

Recent posts by Claire Berlinski