Amanda Davis died at the age of 32 in a plane crash in 2003. Her parents used their vacation time to fly her around the country on a book tour in a chartered plane piloted by her father. On March 14th, the plane crashed in North Carolina, killing all three. McSweeney's published a page with the following letter from Heidi Julavits. Even I miss Amanda now, and I'd never heard of her until today. The page has memories from a lot of people, all good and sad, which can be read here.
"Dear readers,
On the afternoon of Friday, March 14, a plane carrying Amanda Davis and her parents crashed into a mountain in North Carolina. There were no survivors.
Amanda Davis was one of the funniest, most self-effacing, chutzpah-charged, and big-hearted human beings anyone could ever hope to encounter. To meet her was always an historical event, one you would remember for the rest of your life. Amanda was essential. She was vital. She was a forceful and generous (and forcefully generous) presence. She was the magnetic core around which a lot of people swirled, and as such she was a facilitator of relationships and possibility of all sorts. Many of us were connected, through her, to a community that she created and maintained; she made life feel cozy, small, family-like, even for people who lived 3,000 miles apart. With her energetic pragmatism, she commanded the chaotic, nonsensical world to work better, and it did, or at least it seemed to, when she was around.
We all know people who possess both a whip-smart wit and a penchant for the ridiculously sentimental (in the most sappy, excellent, KNOWING way), but no one embodied these soft and edgy extremes like Amanda. Does ‘vicious sweetheart’ make sense? Her friends were her cubs. She protected them, she grubbed food for them, she cuffed them on the head when they got too whiney or pathetic. She was mother bear, psychoanalyst, nurse, real estate agent, plumber, computer technician, consumer advocate, expert on everything from used truck parts to biscuit recipes. The girl had opinions. Well-informed, researched, insightful opinions. She had advice for you, always, about whatever worried or confused you. Don’t know what kind of laptop to buy? Call Amanda. Bewildered by the ins and outs of refinancing your mortgage? Call Amanda. Need advice about your love life, your crappy short story, your sick cat, what color to paint your bathroom? Call Amanda. Have a tiny stupid problem that no one in their right mind has the time to care about? Amanda has the time (but hold on — she’ll have to get rid of that person on the other line, first). Call Amanda.
So we who knew her personally will be robbed of HER (don’t get me started on what she’s been robbed of). Those who didn’t know her personally, those who knew her only (or additionally) through her writing, are robbed of the books she’d yet to write. Amanda was an extremely gifted writer, one just managing to wrestle her many talents into a honed, inimitable voice. Her first book, Circling the Drain, was published by William Morrow in 1999, and was one of the more daring examples of short fiction in the last ten years. Her work floated somewhere between poetry and prose, untethered by narrative, but always concerned with matters of the heart. Her story, “Fat Ladies Floated in the Sky Like Balloons,” was published in McSweeney’s second issue, and exemplified everything they were looking for: it was experimental but lyrical, brave but full of soul. She was, as many have said, “the real thing.”
This was a year of change for Amanda; she’d moved to California and she was HAPPY, really happy. She was awarded an amazing teaching position at Mills College in Oakland, and loved her work there. She was a WRITER who loved to TEACH WRITING (for those who don’t know: this is a rarity), because she was so damned invested in other people’s possibilities.
She lived in a wonderful house on campus, shrouded by trees and featuring a hammock and a barbecue, both of which she put to good use. And her second book and first novel, Wonder When You’ll Miss Me, had just hit the bookstores last week. Her parents used their vacation time to fly their daughter around on her book tour in her father’s small plane (evidently, the Davis clan are genetically bred for encouragement and outlandish gestures of generous support). Her family was en route to a reading when the accident occurred. She and her parents are survived by her younger sister Joanna and her younger brother Adam.
This space will serve, for this week and maybe beyond, as a forum for people who knew and loved Amanda. As those who have been sharing stories about her these past few days have learned, Amanda is managing, STILL, to take charge of this situation in a very familiar way — a story starring her starts, and smiles reluctantly emerge, and suddenly we can see her goofing around and trying to make us laugh, even as we’re missing her so damned hard. We picture her banging her cell phone, cursing out the crappy reception she’s getting and her new plan and vowing to switch services AGAIN. And here’s just one of the many tragedies resulting from this — the one-way manner in which we’re going to have to talk to her from now on, SHE of the boundless advice and wise words, since she can’t call us anymore from where she is. But we know she’d want to hear from us.
— Heidi Julavits"
Here are links that McSweeny's posted to some of her work:
FAT LADIES FLOATED IN THE SKY LIKE BALLOONS
Louisiana Loses Its Cricket Hum
Wonder When You'll Miss Me
