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A daughter's story of unresolved grief and a family's hard-won healing When her husband Bill died in 1969, Tina Presnell gathered her three children. "We won't talk about this," she said. "It will be easier that way." In 2012, several years after her mother's death, Barbara Presnell recovered her father's World War II belongings: a scrapbook, news clippings, documents, and letters. Recalling how much his war experiences had meant to him, Barbara, along with her estranged brother and sister, planned a journey to travel their father's route through Europe. From Omaha Beach in Normandy, France, to the western bank of the Elbe River in Magdeburg, Germany, the siblings would follow the movements of their father's division and rediscover his stories, share memories, and renew family bonds. In Otherwise, I'm Fine, Presnell tells the story of her grief and, across her tour of western Europe, the breakthroughs that released her from recurring depression, resolved her conflicted grief for her mother, and returned her beloved father to her and her siblings as a living memory.
“A comprehensive and unsurpassed anthology of women writers from Appalachia . . . Exceptional in diversity and scope.” —Southern Historian Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia is a landmark anthology that brings together the work of 105 Appalachian women writers, including Dorothy Allison, Harriette Simpson Arnow, Annie Dillard, Nikki Giovanni, Denise Giardina, Barbara Kingsolver, Jayne Anne Phillips, Janice Holt Giles, George Ella Lyon, Sharyn McCrumb, and Lee Smith. Editors Sandra L. Ballard and Patricia L. Hudson offer a diverse sampling of time periods and genres, established authors and emerging voices. From regional favorites to national bestsellers, this unprecedented gather...
From its headwaters in western North Carolina near the Tennessee line, the New River runs north 337 miles, cutting through the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and West Virginia on its way to the Ohio. No big cities inhabit its banks--just a few small towns along the way--and it carries no significant commercial traffic. The age of the New is debated, but it is certainly one of the world's oldest rivers, predating the Atlantic Ocean. This anthology assembles history, poetry, essays and stories by writers who have been inspired by the ancient and secluded stream, and from those whose lives are connected to its flow. Contributors hail from Ashe, Alleghany, Watauga and Wilkes counties in North Carolina, as well as Virginia and West Virginia.
Malin Pereira's collection of eight interviews with leading contemporary African American poets offers an in-depth look at the cultural and aesthetic perspectives of the post-Black Arts Movement generation. This volume includes unpublished interviews Pereira conducted with Wanda Coleman, Yusef Komunyakaa, Thylias Moss, Harryette Mullen, Cornelius Eady, and Elizabeth Alexander, as well as conversations with Rita Dove and Cyrus Cassells previously in print. Largely published since 1980, each of these poets has at least four books. Their influence on new generations of poets has been wide-reaching. The work of this group, says Pereira, is a departure from the previous generation's proscriptive ...
Read your way across North Carolina's Piedmont in the second of a series of regional guides that bring the state's rich literary history to life for travelers and residents. Eighteen tours direct readers to sites that more than two hundred Tar Heel authors have explored in their fiction, poetry, plays, and creative nonfiction. Along the way, excerpts chosen by author Georgann Eubanks illustrate a writer's connection to a specific place or reveal intriguing local culture--insights rarely found in travel guidebooks. Featured authors include O. Henry, Doris Betts, Alex Haley, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, John Hart, Betty Smith, Edward R. Murrow, Patricia Cornwell, Carson McCullers, Maya Angelou, Lee Smith, Reynolds Price, and David Sedaris. Literary Trails is an exciting way to see anew the places that you already love and to discover new people and places you hadn't known about. The region's rich literary heritage will surprise and delight all readers.
With a Hammer for My Heart is the story of Lawanda, a precocious, poverty-stricken fifteen-year-old girl from Cardin, Kentucky, who dreams of attending college. When Lawanda's friendship with an alcoholic World War II veteran named Garland is misinterpreted by their fellow townspeople, a tragedy calls her future into question.
The Pushcart Prize-winning author’s multi-generational memoir interweaves stories across more than a century in a “loving reminder of the ties that bind” (Lee Martin, From Our House and Turning Bones). Are we responsible for, and to, those forces that have formed us—our families, friends, and communities? Where do we leave off and others begin? In The Tribal Knot, award-winning poet and author Rebecca McClanahan mines her personal family history to explore provocative questions about legacy, identity, and familial connection. Poring over letters, artifacts, and documents that span more than a century, McClanahan discovers a tribe of hardscrabble Midwest farmers, hunters, trappers, and laborers struggling to hold tight to the ties that bind them, through poverty, war, political upheavals, illness and accident, filicide and suicide, economic depressions, personal crises, and global disasters. Like the practitioners of Victorian "hair art" who wove strands of family members' hair into a single design, McClanahan braids her ancestors' stories into a single intimate narrative of her search to understand herself and her place in the family's complex past.
A collection of poetry arranged according to the senses and written by award-winning Liz Waldner, including selections entitled "Truth, Beauty, Tree," "The Uses of Things," "Assumption," "Persephone Tells About Some Goings Down," and others.
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