Fishbowl’s Marion Winik gets shout out, and sales boost, from best-selling author Ann Patchett

Local writer and Baltimore Fishbowl columnist Marion Winik got a major boost last weekend when best-selling author Ann Patchett deployed social media heft to praise Winik’s work. View this post on Instagram “Marion Winik is just an amazing force of creativity and good thinking in the world,” Patchett said in Instagram and Facebook posts under the account of her independent Tennessee bookstore. Patchett gave a detailed explanation of the genesis of the Winik publication “The Big Book of the Dead,” which combines essays from two previous books, “Glen Rock Book of the Dead ” and “Baltimore Book of the Dead” and adds new material. Published in 2019, “The Big Book of the Dead” profiles with humor and pathos people in her life who have died. Patchett cites the book as especially instructive for writers because Winik “manages in a short space to completely flesh out a character.” Winik is a creative writing professor at University of Baltimore, and Patchett compared her to Russian literary giant Anton Chekov. “I am stunned by Ann Patchett’s generosity and humbled by her comments,” Winik said in response. “I am sure that this is the first and last time I will ever be compared to Chekov.” In 2011, Patchett opened the independent bookstore Parnassus Books in Nashville and has been posting regular book recommendations on its social media accounts for years. The mention resulted in a “truly lovely sales bump,” according to Megan Fishmann, vice president and director of publicity at Counterpoint Press, Winik’s publisher. Winik noticed that her book is now ranked 8th in the essays category on Amazon. “I should have looked a couple of days ago, but I am sure I was number one million,” she joked. Winik is the author of nine books. Earlier this year, her groundbreaking memoir “First Comes Love” was reissued for its 30th anniversary. “My backlist is suddenly in the spotlight!” says Winik. Among her effusive praise for Winik, Patchett gets one detail wrong: She names Glen Rock, Pennsylvania, as the place where Winik grew up. Readers of Winik’s Baltimore Fishbowl column, Bohemian Rhapsody, know that she proudly hails from Ocean Township, New Jersey. “I am from New Jersey, ride or die,” she says. “I grew up in Ocean Township, but I usually say I’m second-generation Asbury Park; my dad was the QB of the high school there,” she says. Patchett may have misplaced Winik’s hometown, but she clearly got everything else right. We should know. We work with her, and we’re fans, too.