C.E. Poverman

Charles Everit Poverman (born in New Haven, Connecticut) is an American fiction writer.

Life and work

Poverman is the son of A. David Poverman, a surgeon and Helen Goldberg Poverman. He had an older sister, Judith, who died in 1995.

On Labor Day 1955, at age eleven, Poverman contracted polio during the last major epidemic before Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine was released. He was the only child in the ward who neither died nor was permanently paralyzed.

In 1977, he took a position at the University of Arizona at Tucson and published his first novel, Susan, with Viking. In 1980, he published his second novel, Solomon's Daughter, also with Viking. That same year he married the photographer Linda Fry. Their son, Dana, was born in 1983 and their daughter, Marisa, in 1987. In 1986, he published his third novel My Father in Dreams.

Poverman’s second story collection, Skin was published in 1992. In the Winter 1992 issue of The Georgia Review, Greg Johnson wrote that Skin “powerfully dramatizes the stress and confusion of people who try, quixotically and sometimes nobly, to get inside the skin of another person, while a review from PBS Books & Company stated "the stories all hit the mark with their depictions of characters who are devious, gullible, confused, quirky and even insane, but never unreal."

In August 2013, Poverman published his seventh book, Love by Drowning. A starred review in Library Journal called it "an acutely intelligent psychological thriller that will keep readers as off-balance as his protagonist."

In 2019, Poverman's novel, Love by Drowning, was made into a movie with Dow Jazz Films. Poverman wrote the adapted screenplay for the movie.

Works

The Black Velvet Girl (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1976) Susan (New York; Viking, 1977) Solomon’s Daughter (New York: Viking, 1981) My Father in Dreams (New York: Scribners, 1988) Skin: Stories (Princeton: Ontario Review Press, 1992) On the Edge (Princeton: Ontario Review Press, 1997) Love by Drowning (Berkeley, California: El León Literary Arts, 2013)

Published Stories

Landlocked (Santa Monica Review. Spring 1995. Volume 7, Number 2.) Deer Season (The Ontario Review. Spring/Summer 1996. Number 44.) Washington Crossing the Delaware (Gettysburg Review. Winter 1997. Volume 10, No. 4.) Half Wives (The Colorado Review. 47.1. Spring 2020.) Before the N Word (The North American Review. Spring 2022. Volume 307. Number 1.)

Awards

1976, Iowa Short Fiction Award: The Black Velvet Girl