Mixed Relationships March 28, 2010
Posted by Carolyn Burns Bass in African-American literature, fiction, historical fiction, literary fiction, multi-cultural fiction, religion and mysticism, weekly topics.add a comment
Topic of the Week: March 29-April 2, 2010
Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Joining us on Friday, April 2, is Dolen Perkins-Valdez, author of Wench.
The deepest pock on the face of the United States is undoubtedly the era of slavery. One of the most important books of the year, Wench is a historically accurate look at the complex relationships born of slavery. Four slave women from plantations scattered around the South are taken by their masters to a hunting/fishing resort in the free North, given latitude to explore, to think and to scheme. Freedoms unimaginable back on the plantation.
You could call them mistresses, but that’s only a euphemism. The women featured in Wench, Lizzy, Reenie, Sweet and Mawu, are sex slaves to the southern masters they serve. Complicating the relationships are the feelings of love, hate and indifference these women have for their masters. The choices that seem so tempting—escape into the free north—become another form of bondage when they consider the children they’ve born of these sires. Relationships between the slave women one to another form a circle of understanding that leads to a bittersweet ending readers won’t easily forget.
Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s fiction and essays have appeared in StoryQuarterly, Robert Olen Butler Prize Stories 2009, The Kenyon Review, PMS: PoemMemoirStory, North Carolina Literary Review, and Richard Wright Newsletter. Born and raised in Memphis, a graduate of Harvard, and a former University of California postdoctoral fellow, Perkins-Valdez teaches creative writing at the University of Puget Sound. She splits her time between Washington, DC and Seattle, Washington. Wench is her first novel.
Follow Dolen Perkins-Valdez on Twitter at @Dolen.
Read chatscript from Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s visit in #litchat here.
Murder As a Laughing Matter March 21, 2010
Posted by Carolyn Burns Bass in commercial fiction, fiction, mystery.1 comment so far
Topic of the Week: March 22-26, 2010
Wendy Clinch
When murder is wrapped around a feisty protagonist, a cast of zany characters, a love interest, and a vivid setting, laughter ensues and the horror of death is deflected. Carl Hiaasen and Janet Evanovich have turned this list of ingredients into a formula that has elevated them to celebrity status in the minds of mystery readers. A formula this broad allows ample room for new authors to play. This week in LitChat we’ll discuss books that use humor to deflect tragedy.
On Friday, March 26, Wendy Clinch, author of Double Black, joins us as guest host of this discussion. Double Black is Clinch’s first novel, a story set in a picturesque Vermont ski town so real you’d swear you took your first lesson there. A deft casting of straight characters against caricatures deflect the pall of death that hangs over this idyllic setting, picking up speed for a fun run to the finish. While the story never lacks sparkle, it’s the passages when characters are geared-up on the mountain, reflecting Clinch’s passion for skiing, that brings this novel to life.
Born and raised in Ocean County, NJ, Wendy Clinch is the founder of TheSkiDiva.com, the premier internet community for women skiers. She writes about women’s skiing and related topics at her blog. Clinch is a former advertising copywriter, having spent more than 25 years in the field, most recently as a partner in her own agency in suburban Philadelphia. A graduate of Syracuse University, Wendy now lives in Vermont with her husband, Jon Clinch, author of Finn: A Novel and the forthcoming Kings of the Earth, both from Random House.
Follow Clinch on Twitter at @WendyClinch.
Read chatscript from Wendy Clinch’s visit in #litchat here.
Generational Crimes & Curses March 14, 2010
Posted by Carolyn Burns Bass in fiction, historical fiction, literary fiction, multi-cultural fiction, women's fiction.5 comments
Topic of the Week: March 16-20, 2010
Kristin Bair O'Keeffe
A fascinating theme in literature is cyclical generational bondage. Some religions refer to it as “sins of the parents visited on the offspring,” and “generational curses,” while psychologists recognize and commonly treat devastating aftermaths of this tendency of children to repeat the mistakes of their parents. Substance abuse, incest/child molestation, domestic violence and other crimes mirrored from one generation to another, are common topics of authors through the centuries. This week in #litchat we’re discussing books that feature characters struggling with generational curses and bondage.
Kristin Bair O’Keeffe‘s debut novel, Thirsty, takes on this theme with a cast of cagey and sympathetic characters led by 16-year-old Klara, who leaves an abusive father in Croatia for the promise of a new life in America with a man she barely knows. Planted in Thirsty, Pennsylvania, a hardscrabble steel town outside Pittsburgh, Klara soon finds her husband even more abusive than her father. Within O’Keeffe’s lyrical prose lie understated observations of 19th century social standards, such as the place of African-Americans in the post-Civil war North, alcohol abuse, and friendships between women. The heart of the story beats at the end when Klara’s daughter marries a man even more abusive than her father. With the help of the town drunk gone sober, Klara moves decisively to break the cycle of violence without resorting to the violence of her dreams.
O’Keeffe has lived in Shanghai, China since April 2006. She is a voracious reader, a happy mom, an engaging teacher who believes in “telling the best story you can… believing in your writing… and working your arse off,” a fierce advocate for the end of domestic violence, and a writer who spends as much time as possible in “writerhead.” Kristin’s work has been published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Poets & Writers Magazine, San Diego Family Magazine, The Baltimore Review, The Gettysburg Review, and many other publications. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia College Chicago and has been teaching writing for almost 15 years. O’Keeffe blogs at www.kristinbairokeeffeblog.com.
Read chatscript from Kristin Bair O’Keeffe’s appearance in #litchat here.
True Crime and Art March 8, 2010
Posted by Carolyn Burns Bass in narrative nonfiction, true crime.Tags: topic of the week
add a comment
Topic of the Week: March 8-12, 2010
Joining us a guest host of LitChat on Friday, March 12 is Elyssa East, author of Dogtown. When East traveled to the area of coastal Massachusetts known as Dogtown to research work by the painter Marsden Hartley, she found more than just the story of an artist’s renewal among glacier stones and wilderness. An area rife with legends of witches, pirates, ghosts and other miscreants, East discovered the tale of a grisly 1984 murder that still lives in the imagination of local residents. East’s skillful interweaving of true crime narrative with chapters about local lore, history and the artist Marsden Hartley make Dogtown a book that defies category.
Elyssa East received her B.A. in art history from Reed College and her M.F.A. in creative writing from Columbia University’s School of the Arts, where she was the recipient of three prestigious fellowships: the Susan G. Hertog Research Assistantship, a Departmental Research Assistantship, and a Writing Division Merit Fellowship. Her Master’s thesis—a draft of the Dogtown manuscript—won an M.F.A. Faculty Selects award. Elyssa has received additional awards and fellowships from the Ragdale, Jerome, and Ludwig Vogelstein Foundations; the University of Connecticut; and the Phillips Library.
Elyssa’s writing has been published in The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News, The Brooklyn Rail, Guernica, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, and various New England regional magazines. A scene from Elyssa’s opera libretto, Mr. Hawthorne’s Engagement, was performed with American Opera Project’s Composers and the Voice series. Elyssa created Columbia University’s Artists’ Resource Center and ran KGB Bar’s Columbia University Faculty Selects Reading Series for three years. Additionally she has worked as a nonfiction reviews editor at Publisher’s Weekly; the Managing Director of the Maine Summer Dramatic Institute and Executive Producer of Shakespeare in Deering Oaks Park in Portland, Maine; a baker; an archaeologist’s assistant; and a dump-truck driver.
Follow East on Twitter at @elyssaeast.
