Miranda July

Award-winning filmmaker and performing artist Miranda July brings her extraordinary talents to the page in a startling, sexy, and tender collection. In these stories, July gives the most seemingly insignificant moments a sly potency. A benign encounter, a misunderstanding, a shy revelation can reconfigure the world. Her characters engage awkwardly -- they are sometimes too remote, sometimes too intimate. With great compassion and generosity, July reveals their idiosyncrasies and the odd logic and longing that govern their lives. No One Belongs Here More Than You is a stunning debut, the work of a writer with a spectacularly original and compelling voice.

In the summer of 2009, Miranda July was struggling to finish writing the screenplay for her much-anticipated second film. During her increasingly long lunch breaks, she began to obsessively read the PennySaver, the iconic classifieds booklet that reached everywhere and seemed to come from nowhere. Who was the person selling the "Large Leather Jacket, $10"? It seemed important to find out—or at least it was a great distraction from the screenplay.

Accompanied by photographer Brigitte Sire, July crisscrossed Los Angeles to meet a random selection of PennySaver sellers, glimpsing thirteen surprisingly moving and profoundly specific realities, along the way shaping her film, and herself, in unexpected ways.

Elegantly blending narrative, interviews, and photographs with July's off-kilter honesty and deadpan humor, this is a story of procrastination and inspiration, isolation and connection, and grabbing hold of the invisible world.

In a world obsessed with 'reality' programming, the collaborative public art project known as "Learning To Love You More" offers a refreshing take on how people think, act and love. Created by Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher, the web-based project, begun in 2002, offers more than sixty 'assignments' that can be completed by anyone: 'Write the phone conversation you wish you could have'; 'Draw a constellation from someone's freckles'; 'Take a flash photo under your bed.' Completed assignments are posted on the web site; to date, more than 5,000 people have participated - artists and non-artists of all ages, from Tokyo to Tel Aviv. July and Fletcher have curated a selection of the most memorable submissions - some moving, others hilarious and oddly brilliant, to create a pop culture collage that tells a larger story about life today. The result is an engaging, heartwarming, idea sparking book sure to inspire, teach, and entertain. Her film "Me And You And Everyone We Know" (Film Four) was a cult hit in 2005 - it won 15 Awards including the Golden Camera at Cannes and the Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision at the Sundance film festival.