List $32.95

Written by Amy Hassinger - Performed by Mia Barron - Unabridged Nonfiction - 6 CASSETTES - 8 hours

Publisher, Listen & Live Audio (May 2003)

" A grieving mother uses her daughter as an artistic muse, complicating and ultimately destroying the girl's vulnerable adolescence... Affecting..." --Kirkus Reviews

" Very few writers are able to give the period of adolescence the wider resonance of serious adult literature. In Nina : Adolescence, Amy Hassinger does so brilliantly. This is an exciting debut by a splendid young writer. " --Robert Olen Butler

Told with eloquence, tenderness, and a fearless sensuality, Nina : Adolescence is an unforgettable and utterly compelling debut. At fifteen, Nina is trapped in the net of her parents' grief over the accidental death of her little brother. Eager to hold the family together, she realizes that her mother's painting is the only way to rescue her from the brink of despair. At Nina's urging, her mother returns to the studio, where she begins a series of nude portraits of her remaining child-paintings that will chronicle the slow unfolding of a girl's body into a woman's.

The novel examines the central questions of adolescence, sexuality and identity, as well as raises questions about the limits of artistic freedom, and tenuous balance between serving oneself and serving the other in intimate relationships. It will be engaging reading for anyone who's gone through the pain and joy of growing up.

About the Author: Amy Hassinger grew up in Newton, Massachusetts and attended Barnard College (1994 Grad), and later, the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. She has studied ballet, and modern and jazz dance, which formed the basis for much of the dance material in Nina : Adolescence. Her work has also been published in Blithe House Quarterly and MsFit Magazine. In 1994, she received the Peter S. Prescott Prize for Writing, and, at the Writers' Workshop, she was awarded the Joseph E. and Ursil I. Callen Scholarship as well as a Teaching-Writing Fellowship.

About the Performer: Mia Barron, a resident of New York City, has worked at theatres in New York and around the country including Playwrights Horizons, Lincoln Center, New York Theatre Workshop, NY Stage & Film, Westport Playhouse, The Guthrie, The Huntington, Long Wharf, California Shakespeare Festival, New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, Berkshire Theatre Festival and The Acting Company, among others. Film and television work include Guiding Light and the soon to be released Amy's Rules. She has an MFA from the Graduate Acting Program at NYU.