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| A Solemn Pleasure : To Imagine, Witness, and Write
ISBN: 9781934137970
Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / Bellevue Literary Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time
Subjects: Literature;
Novelist Pritchard (Palmerino) offers an uneven but often moving collection of 15 essays on such varied topics as the search for a stable sense of place and the writing life. "We praise artists to devalue ourselves," Pritchard writes in "A Graven Space," which proves less concerned with its ostensible subject-Georgia O'Keeffe-than with the creation of false narratives around idols. "From the Deep South to the Desert South: An Epiphyte's Confession" discusses Pritchard's attempts to emulate famous Russian and American Southern writers early in her career, only to find she had become "a clever mimic." Pritchard's interest in location is clear throughout, whether she's in London, Panjshir, or Edinburgh; the collection peaks with her revelation that she had found, in the American Southwest, a place without attachments. Her writing is often at its best at its most somber, as when describing the hospice nurses who attended Pritchard's dying mother as "midwives," or recalling the life and death of an American soldier she met while embedded as a journalist in Afghanistan. One of the strongest selections, "Still, God Helps You" depicts her encounter with a Sudanese man who was sold into slavery as a child. The collection's impact is blunted by repetitive essays on the craft of writing. Nonetheless, readers will treasure the book's numerous memorable moments. Agent: Joy Harris, Joy Harris Literary Agency. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Melissa Pritchard is the author of eight books of fiction, including the novel Palmerino and the story collection The Odditorium , as well as the essay collection A Solemn Pleasure (forthcoming from Bellevue Literary Press in 2015). Among other honors, her books have received the Flannery O'Connor, Janet Heidinger Kafka, and Carl Sandburg awards and two of her short fiction collections were New York Times Notable Book and Editors' Choice selections. Pritchard has worked as a journalist in Afghanistan, India, and Ethiopia, and her nonfiction has appeared in various publications, including O, The Oprah Magazine , Arrive , Chicago Tribune , and Wilson Quarterly . She lives in Phoenix, Arizona.
Foreword contributor Bret Anthony Johnston is the author of the best-selling novel Remember Me Like This , a Barnes & Noble Discover selection and New York Times Editors' Choice, and Corpus Christi: Stories . He's also the editor of Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer . He is the Paul and Catherine Buttenweiser Director of Creative Writing at Harvard University. |
