Here's a quick guide to the public contretemps between author Kate Braverman and her publisher I reported on over the weekend:

• Graywolf Press, an indpendent publisher based in St. Paul, created a nonfiction prize last year and gave the inaugural award to Kate Braverman, author of the critically acclaimed novels Lithium for Medea and Palm Latitudes, for her memoir, Frantic Transmissions to and from Los Angeles.

• When I met Braverman last month, she spoke to me about her frustrations with Graywolf, saying that they'd censored the ending she had written for the book because of its "clear moral and political trajectory" and asked her to write what she dismissively dubbed an "HBO ending" instead, and that they were doing nothing to help her promote the book now that it was out. She also complained about the introduction Robert Polito, who helped judge the prize for Graywolf, had written for her, angered by what she considered a list of obscure figures to whom her work was being compared. When asked after the interview if she really wanted to go public with these complaints, she asked me to consider them off-the-record, expressing hope that she could rehabilitate her relationship with Graywolf privately. I respected her wishes, though when the LA Times ran a profile of Braverman with self-assessments of her talent that many literary bloggers found worthy of ridicule, I acknowledged similar statements made to me which, though given on the record, I had chosen not to build my story around.

• At a Graywolf Press reading last Saturday afternoon, Braverman deviated from her expected reading of an excerpt from Transmissions to air her grievances to the audience, which included Polito and Graywolf director Fiona McCrae. I was at another part of the conference, but caught up with McCrae, who said, "Her claims are so absurd, they don't need to be dignified with a response." Polito told me his side of the disputed ending to the memoir, acknowledging that they'd asked Braverman to write a new final chapter, but insisting that it was rejected solely because it wasn't on a par with the rest of the manuscript. I got hold of Braverman by email; she reiterated her accusations against Graywolf and expressed her belief that the press and Polito were incapable of getting her work critical validation and ensuring her place in the American literary canon as "the female Mailer" or "the Jewish Didion." As she put it, "No one of importance has read [my] work. It just gets referenced as great and legendary, which doesn't bring me to the attention of the people who need to put 2 + 2 together." Reaction from Polito and other eyewitnesses to her denouncement, however, suggested that the incident was likely (unfortunately so) to derail the potential comeback the memoir could have spurred.