![]() ![]() The bayou has its share of terrors of other kinds, and so do the matters of life and death that children ought to be spared suffice it to say that there’s plenty of blood, and no small amount of vomit, whether owing to morning sickness or alcohol poisoning. But they don’t Esch and her three brothers are marvels of self-sufficiency, and as the vast storm looms on the horizon, building from tropical depression to category 5 monster, they occupy themselves figuring out what kind of canned meats they need to lay in and how many jugs of water have to be hauled from the store. Esch’s task is simple, too: She has to disguise the pregnancy from her widowed father, a task that is easier than it might sound, since her father is constantly self-medicated (“Outside the window, Daddy jabbed at the belly of the house with his can of beer”) and, much of the time, seems unaware that his children ought to be depending on him. She is so young, in fact, that her brothers can scare her with a Hansel and Gretel story set in the Mississippi bayou where she lives, yet old enough to understand that the puppies that are gushing forth from the family dog are more than a metaphor. ![]() Set over a dozen days while awaiting the arrival of Hurricane Katrina, and then dealing with its consequences, Ward’s ( Where the Line Bleeds, 2008) tale is superficially a simple one: Young Esch, barely a teenager, is pregnant. An evocative novel of a family torn apart by grief, hardship, misunderstanding and, soon, the biggest storm any of them has ever seen. ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() Tell us about the origin of your essay “That There Would Be Better Pornography.” What sparked the initial idea or caused you to start writing the first draft? Here, Barbara Duffey talks with interviewer William Hoffacker about technical writing, in vitro fertilization, and the subjunctive mood. You can visit her online at or follow her on Twitter essay, " That There Would Be Better Pornography," appeared in Issue Sixty-Three of The Collagist. She is an assistant professor of English at Dakota Wesleyan University and lives in Mitchell, SD, with her husband and son. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Blackbird, Western Humanities Review, and elsewhere, and her prose in CutBank, The Collagist, and the anthologies Exigencies (Dark House Press, 2015) and Oh, Baby! (In Fact Books, forthcoming). ![]() Barbara Duffey is the author of the poetry collection I Might Be Mistaken (Word Poetry, forthcoming July 2015) and is a 2015 NEA Literature Fellow in poetry. ![]() ![]() ![]() Ryle admits he wants a relationship with her. They go back and forth with this until one day it comes to a head. Ryle wants her but she is scared for her heart. Due to an accident, Lily finds out Ryle is Allysa’s brother. She makes Lily hire her and they get on working. That’s when she meets Allysa, a rich girl obsessed with Pinterest and decorating. She buys a store to open her florist business. Lily is looking for her one love whereas Ryle isn’t and is satisfied with one-night stands.Īfter the talk, Lily is determined to follow her dreams. ![]() They both have different approaches in life. The guy, Ryle, a neurosurgeon in residency, tells her that he wants to sleep with her. They both fall into easy stranger conversation telling Naked Truths. Lily Bloom is just sitting on a rooftop in Boston when some guy comes up there thrashing patio chairs. ![]() ![]() For its collection of prehistoric gold, Celtic art and Viking artifacts, the National Museum of Ireland is worth a visit as well.Įasy-going locals are a sociable lot known for their wit, charm and passion for good food and drink. Patrick’s Cathedral, completed in 1260 and still the nation’s largest cathedral. Historical attractions include Dublin Castle, a Norman fortress built in 1204, and St. ![]() ![]() ![]() Housed at Trinity College, the alma mater of writers like Bram Stoker and Samuel Becket, the Book of Kells is a rare, ornamented copy of the four gospels of the New Testament. Dublin is the home to literary giants like Oscar Wilde, James Joyce and George Bernard Shaw, so it’s no surprise that one of the city’s greatest attractions is a 1200-year-old book. Other cities in Europe may be known for art or music Dublin is renowned for its literature. The city treasures its past while never forgetting to live in the present. Most of the city’s inhabitants live in outlying suburbs, however, and Dublin’s main travel destinations are located in the center of the city.Ī city with a thousand-year-old past, Dublin is both an historical city and a bustling modern-day port. The capital of the Republic of Ireland, Dublin is surprisingly large for a country with a total population of around five million people. ![]() ![]() “The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories” by Angela Carter (1987, Penguin Books) I like my fantasy and horror to have some basis in reality for me to identify with and balance the fantastic element. The only problem is that Lee, like my other Fantasy fave, Clark Ashton Smith, has a tendency to go full on Fantasy, setting stories in totally made up worlds with exotic names and fanciful creatures. These drew from the fairy tales of my childhood, but reinvented them as quality fantasy tales. It was a massmarket paperback of Tanith Lee’s “Red as Blood”. ![]() Then one day I found a book that caught my eye and gave me hope. Unfortunately, most adaptations are nothing more than an excuse to sex them up or to throw some unrelated tale together and name-drop some fairy tale character for name recognition. I always saw potential in there to tell darker tales and looked for stories with the magic of these tales but with more grown up themes. I also love the Victorian authors whose stories for children drew heavily from the genre, like Lewis Carroll or George MacDonald. The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, Jack Zipes ed. ![]() ![]() ![]() The prequel to the New York Times bestselling book The Magician King and the #1 bestseller The Magician's Land, The Magicians is one of the most daring and inventive works of literary fantasy in years. The land of his childhood fantasies turns out to be much darker and more dangerous than he ever could have imagined. But his newfound powers lead him down a rabbit hole of hedonism and disillusionment, and ultimately to the dark secret behind the story of Fillory. When Quentin is unexpectedly admitted to an elite, secret college of magic, it looks like his wildest dreams have come true. A high school math genius, he’s secretly fascinated with a series of children’s fantasy novels set in a magical land called Fillory, and real life is disappointing by comparison. Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. an unexpectedly moving coming-of-age story.” “This gripping novel draws on the conventions of contemporary and classic fantasy novels in order to upend them . . . ![]() ![]() “ The Magicians may just be the most subversive, gripping and enchanting fantasy novel I’ve read this century.” “A very knowing and wonderful take on the wizard school genre.” “Sad, hilarious, beautiful, and essential to anyone who cares about modern fantasy.” “ The Magicians is to Harry Potter as a shot of Irish whiskey is to a glass of weak tea. The New York Times bestselling novel about a young man practicing magic in the real world, now an original series on SYFY ![]() ![]() ![]() First published in 1930 in Britain, it’s about a plucky young woman who succeeds in the clothing business, in part by anticipating the huge changes about to wash over the industry as a result of mass production. This interweaving of fabric and invention is the basis of High Wages, Dorothy Whipple’s irresistibly shrewd novel of business and love. ![]() Virginia Postrel, who stitches a grand history of textiles in her book The Fabric of Civilization, reminds us that Athena was the goddess of weaving, among other things, and that “the Greeks called her domain ‘techne,’ a word that shares a root with both technology and textile.” No less important was the technological and managerial evolution of the “rag trade,” which for the better part of two centuries has provided a path (however arduous) toward freedom and equality for women in developing countries-including Britain and the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries. ![]() ![]() Comparisons under “By Race/Ethnicity'' are calculated by subtracting each group’s rate from the All students rate, then adding the absolute differences for a “racial balance” score not shown here. Students can take more than one course in each category, but enrollment rates are capped at 100%.Ĭomparisons under “By Income” are calculated by subtracting low-income rates from not-low-income rates any difference larger than 3% is noted as less or more access. If 0 students were enrolled in a course at this school, that course will display as “not offered” for that year. If you see annual enrollment rates above 25%, that may mean students are taking more than one course in a given subject over the course of 4 years, for example, Regents-level Physics and AP-level Physics. ![]() If every student took each course once over the course of 4 years, we would expect to see annual enrollment rates around 25%. Data notes: The data shows what percent of all students in Grades 9-12 were enrolled in each type of course during one school year. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Now one of America's acclaimed ceramicists, Beatrice Wood shares the intriguing details of her unconventional life in I Shock Myself. Her promising youth was followed by a disastrous marriage, financial woes and a debilitating physical affliction but in 1933, at the age of forty, she discovered the passion that would change her life: pottery. She fled to Paris for several bohemian seasons as a painter and actress, then returned to New York where she fell into the loving clutches of two Frenchmen: Henri-Pierre Roche, the author of Jules and Jim, and Marcel Duchamp, the iconoclastic Dadaist. Rebellious, radical and romantic, Beatrice Wood was determined to be an artist. I Shock Myself : The Autobiography of Beatrice WoodĬondition: Good condition some creasing on edge of pages, Autographed by Beatrice Wood (pictured)īeatrice Wood's Life has been extraordinary in every way, from earliest childhood, when her dominating Victorian mother realized she "wasn't like the rest of them," to her productive life at ninety-five in California's Ojiai Valley. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() I think we can look forward to many more fine books from Caroline Frost.” This immersive, full-bodied novel will keep its hooks in you long after the last page is read, and marks the arrival of a tremendously wise and talented writer. Everything you could want in a novel is here: rich, evocative settings, conflicted loyalties and hearts, and a slow fuse of a plot that throws off plenty of sparks on its way to final ignition. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Kera Yonker, Caroline Frost Wins $5000 Crook’s Corner Book Prize for Debut NovelĬhapel Hill, North Carolina, January 9, 2023- Shadows of Pecan Hollow by Caroline Frost, published by William Morrow, is the winner of the tenth annual Crook’s Corner Book Prize for the best debut novel set in the American South.Ĭhosen by this year’s judge, National Book Award Finalist Ben Fountain, Shadows of Pecan Hollow is a hauntingly intimate and distinctly original debut about the complexity of love-both romantic and familial-and the bonds that define us.įountain says, “With Shadows of Pecan Hollow, Caroline Frost delivers a stunner of a debut novel that reads more like the work of an accomplished master. ![]() |