(PITTSFIELD, Mass.) – Novelist and essayist Cathi Hanauer will appear as the featured author for July 2012 in the WXW Writers Room series at yBar on Tuesday, July 24, 2012, at 8 p.m. Hanauer will read a short excerpt from her brand new novel, Gone, and then answer questions and discussing writing, life, marriage, or whatever else anyone wants to discuss. Admission is free.

Cathi Hanauer is the author of three novels, Gone (Atria/Simon & Schuster, 2012), Sweet Ruin (Atria/Simon & Schuster, 2006), and My Sister’s Bones (Delacorte, 1996), and the editor of the # 10 New York Times bestselling essay collection The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth about Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood and Marriage (Morrow/HarperCollins, 2002), which was called out in Deborah Felder’s A Bookshelf of Our Own: Must-Reads for Women along with works by Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Grace Paley, Betty Friedan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Cynthia Ozick, Toni Morrison, and Susan Faludi.

Hanauer has written articles, essays, and/or reviews for the New York Times, Elle, O, Self, Glamour, Whole Living, Mademoiselle, Parenting, Child, Redbook, and other magazines; she was the monthly books columnist for both Glamour and Mademoiselle and wrote the monthly advice column “Relating” in Seventeen for seven years.

Hanauer has taught writing at The New School in New York, and at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, as well as privately. She lives in Northampton, Mass., with her husband, writer and New York Times ‘Modern Love’ editor Daniel Jones, and their daughter and son.

The WordXWord Festival celebrates the transformative power of words – written, spoken and sung. The festival is held annually for eight days in August, taking place in various venues in downtown Pittsfield, Mass. Venues range from bars to barbershops, parks to parking lots, and stores to stages. The artists presented include writers working in fiction and creative non-fiction; playwrights; songwriters; and spoken word performers.

In addition to the August festival, WordXWord hosts the Tuesday Night Writers Room, a weekly series featuring novelists and poets who share their completed work as well as works-in-progress; 10×10 Poetry which presents 11 poets in 11 days during the 10×10 On North Festival; and the 30/30 Poetry Challenge.