Short-story author and novelist Jacqueline Crooks Looking Back on 2016 Interview by Jo Ely, Contributing Editor Jacqueline Crooks is a Jamaican-born, British short-story writer whose main subjects are migration and Caribbean subcultures. Crooks is A Wasafiri Prize runner-up, and the first chapter of her novel Fire Rush was published by Granta (WW15, the Anthology of New Writing,…
Tag: books
Review: Annie Dillard’s Living By Fiction
Traditional vs. Modernist approaches, Fine vs. Plain prose styles By Richard Gilbert, Contributing Editor LIVING BY FICTION by Annie Dillard. Harper Perennial. 192 pages. The cultural assumption is that the novel is the proper home of significance and that nonfiction is mere journalism. This is interesting because it means that in two centuries our assumptions have…
Book Review: Know Thyself
“A poet writes to continue asking questions” By Ruth Lepson, poet-in-residence at New England Conservatory of Music It takes nerve to write homophonic renderings of Shakespeare’s sonnets, yet that’s exactly what Joyce Peseroff has done in one section of her well-crafted, complex recent book of poems: Like a granite island quarried to oblivion, her husband’s memory…
WTP Writer: Charlotte Holmes
Into the Grass Labyrinth Interview by Emily Jaeger, Features Editor Charlotte Holmes is a writer, a poet, and a teacher of creative writing. Her first book, Gifts and Other Stories, was published in 1994. Published by BkMk Press in 2016, her new collection of stories, The Grass Labyrinth, has been hailed as “a contemporary classic.” Holmes received…
Eye on the Indies
A Look at Indie Authors and Their Publishers By Lanie Tankard, Book Review Editor Book: Where’s the Moon?: A Memoir of the Space Coast & the Florida Dream College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, November 2, 2016 ($26.00 paperback, 224 pages, 29 B&W photos, index). ISBN 978-1-62349-450-6 Author: Ann McCutchan Ann McCutchan is an essayist and journalist…
Book Review: Tula Telfair
Invented Landscapes by Richard Malinsky Tula Telfair: Invented Landscapes; Abrams; October 18, 2016; U.S.; 160 pages; $60 Hardcover Tula Telfair: Invented Landscapes presents a wide range of Telfair’s major paintings, at once both intimate and grandiose. Its focus is on the power of the landscape and fragility of nature informed by her childhood divided between four continents, and…
Latest Read: Encaustic Art in the Twenty-First Century
An Exercise in Range by Richard Malinsky, Arts Editor Encaustic Art in the Twenty-First Century By Anne Lee and E. Ashley Rooney. Schiffer Publishing, Ltd., 2016. $59.99. The precise temperature regulation of the wax in the honeycomb is the same basic principle applied to the encaustics medium. With the addition of damar resin and color pigments, today’s artists can…
Featured Bookmarks: The Literary
Link Highlights for Writers and Readers By Dewitt Henry, Literary Bookmarks Editor Monthly I’ll post and describe links here to online resources, magazines, and author sites that seem informative and inspiring for working writers. Most are free. Suggestions are welcomed. 1. AGENT QUERY is a helpful tool both for querying over 2000 agents (“the internet’s largest free…
Eye on the Indies
Indie Book Reviews and a Look at Indie Publishers By Lanie Tankard, Book Review Editor Book: Losing Helen: An Essay Pasadena, CA: Red Hen Press, September 2016 ($14.00 paperback, 110 pages). ISBN 978-1-59709-990-5 Author: Carol Becker Carol Becker is Dean of Faculty and Professor of the Arts at Columbia University School of the Arts. She was previously Dean of…
WTP Writer: Beth Kephart
Handling the Truth by Richard Gilbert, Contributing Editor Beth Kephart is the award-winning author of over 20 books of poetry, fiction, and memoir for teens and adults. She is a partner in Juncture Workshops and a professor of Creative Nonfiction at the University of Pennsylvania, where she received the 2015 Beltran Family Award for Innovative Teaching…
Exhibition Review: Ten Photographers Envision a Museum
Reimagining a Historical Place by Richard Malinsky, Arts Editor In Place: Contemporary Photographers Envision a Museum at the Florence Griswold House in Old Lyme, Connecticut, is an exhibition of a select group of photographers tasked with creating works that address the historic site’s landscape, collections, and story. The place has proved an inspiration to artists for…
Latest Read: Handling the Truth by Beth Kephart
The Medium and its Messenger by Richard Gilbert Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir by Beth Kephart. Gotham Books, 254 pp. Here’s three good reasons to read Beth Kephart’s book on writing memoir: her lapidary prose; her vision of memoir as an instrument of inquiry and transcendence; and her superb annotated list of recommended…