Lifestyle

In my library: Sarah Ruhl

When Sarah Ruhl won a MacArthur Fellowship — better known as the “Genius” award — she told The Post that the first thing she planned to buy was a new pair of sneakers. That was eight years and several Pulitzer and Tony nominated plays ago (“In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play,” “Dead Man’s Cell Phone”). The sneakers are long since shot, but Ruhl’s going strong.

Her new play, “Stage Kiss,” was recently extended through April 14 at Playwrights Horizons, where it received terrific reviews and is her funniest yet. It was inspired, she says, by going to rehearsals: “I kept thinking what an odd job it was for actors to kiss in my plays, and wondering what was going on in their lives as they did.”

Here’s what’s in her library.

Words in Air
by Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell

This is the complete collection of their letters to each other. It’s an amazing story: They met early in their lives and were soul mates even though he had other wives and she in effect was a lesbian. But their letters communicate such love and intellectual passion for each other and each other’s work. I did an adaptation of this, and it’s playing in Philadelphia.

Across ManyMountains
by Yangzom Brauen

A beautiful account of three generations of Tibetan women who left for India and then came to America. I’m writing a play right now about a Tibetan man who’s married to a white woman. They have a reincarnated Lama as a child, and they have to decide whether they should give up their child to a monastery.

The Collected Stories
by Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield is the only writer Virginia Woolf was said to be jealous of. She was from New Zealand and her output was small: She died at 34 of tuberculosis. I love her story “Bliss,” about a woman who wakes up happy and then realizes, during a party, that her husband is cheating on her.

Gluten is My Bitch
by April Peveteaux

I have celiac disease and can’t eat gluten — the only other playwright who has this is Caryl Churchill, so I feel I’m in good company! A lot of books about this have a morose or scientific bent, so it’s nice to see someone who’s rightfully irritated by the situation and writes about it with some irony. When your food life is boring, you need humor.