Celluloid Strangers

Lovingly researched and written over the past decade, Celluloid Strangers tells the story of four brothers who have left their native northeast and converge in Los Angeles just after WWII ends. A lawyer, a mobster, a screenwriter, and a shopkeeper, each of these men makes a profound impact on the emerging landscape of postwar California as they deal with the impact that their shared history—and our nation’s history—has had upon them. Old Hollywood, studio era union struggles, and recreated House Un-American Activities Committee investigations into supposed communist subversion in the motion picture industry abound.

Born and raised amongst the puddles of Portland, Oregon, Eric Wasserman has traveled widely and has lived in many places near oceans and seas, including the great city of Los Angeles. An eternal West Coaster at heart, he is now permanently self-exiled to the beautifully landlocked Midwest. He is the author of a collection of short stories, The Temporary Life, and his fiction has won the David Dornstein Memorial Creative Writing Contest as well as the Cervena Barva Press Fiction Chapbook Prize. He is an Assistant Professor of English at The University of Akron, where he is the founder and faculty advisor for Rubbertop Review: An Annual Journal of The University of Akron and Greater Ohio. He is also on the faculty of the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing (NEOMFA). A member of the Board of Trustees for Akron Film, he lives in Akron, Ohio with his amazing wife, Thea, their three cats, and a lovable and loyal, although regrettably stubborn and willful St. Bernard mix dog named Jor-El. Celluloid Strangers is Eric’s first novel. Feel free to visit him at www.ericwasserman.com.