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A Solemn Pleasure (eBook)

To Imagine, Witness, and Write

Melissa Pritchard (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2015
192 Seiten
Bellevue Literary Press (Verlag)
978-1-934137-97-0 (ISBN)

Lese- und Medienproben

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Reflections on a literary life pulled in two directions: from war zone journalism to the writing and teaching of fiction.

Firecracker Award FinalistPoets & Writers “Best Books for Writers” selectionLiterary Hub “Best Books about Books” selectionImage: Art, Faith, Mystery “Top Ten of the Year” selectionIn an essay entitled “Spirit and Vision” Melissa Pritchard poses the question: “Why write?” Her answer reverberates throughout A Solemn Pleasure, presenting an undeniable case for both the power of language and the nurturing constancy of the writing life. Whether describing the deeply interior imaginative life required to write fiction, searching for the lost legacy of American literature as embodied by Walt Whitman, being embedded with a young female GI in Afghanistan, traveling with Ethiopian tribes, or revealing the heartrending story of her informally adopted son William, a former Sudanese child slave, this is nonfiction vividly engaged with the world. In these fifteen essays, Pritchard shares her passion for writing and storytelling that educates, honors, and inspires.Melissa Pritchard is the author of, most recently, the novel Palmerino and the short story collection The Odditorium. 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.

lt;div>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.

I.
A Room in London

The writer lives for two months in London, in another writer’s cramped but atmospheric refuge.
Spirit and Vision

In this essay, the question “why write?” is posed and by way of an answer, Walt Whitman is shown to be a writer of compassionate witness, in contrast to the profit-based pressures of the marketplace.
From the Deep South to the Desert South: An Epiphyte’s Confession

Aware of the power of region in fiction, the writer wonders if her own bland, semi-erased origins will be an obstacle to her literary ambitions.
On Kaspar Hauser

In the British Library, composing a fictional account of the German-born feral child, Kaspar Hauser, the writer comes to see books as devotional objects, holy histories, reliquaries of the human mind.

II.
Time and Biology: On the Threshold of the Sacred

How inescapable pressures of temporality and mortality upon any writer’s work can be met with cultivated courage and an undiminished passion for expressing emotional truths.
Elephant in the Dark

In this essay, an argument is made for “point of view” as being one of the most critical, early decisions to be made by the writer when embarking on a new story.
The Gift of Warwick

A powerful, bittersweet arc of community can emerge in a writing workshop over weeks or months, attesting to attachments formed by a common vulnerability of writers and their shared passion for language and story.

III.
Doxology

The origins and history of the dachshund lead into the author’s own love for her miniature male dachshund, Simon.
A Solemn Pleasure

When the writer reluctantly travels to a writing residency in a castle outside of Edinburgh, Scotland, weeks after her mother’s death, her grief is given perspective when she discovers a cemetery of ancient headstones, each inscription a compressed, often tragic, story.
A Graven Space

In this reflective essay on Georgia O’Keefe, a question emerges: is it possible we idealize the lives of renowned artists in an attempt to unconsciously avoid responsibility for the success or failure of our own creativity?
Decomposing Articles of Faith

Here is an unorthodox, even heretical, response to familiar phrases of Catholic prayer by the writer, herself an unorthodox, even heretical, Catholic.

IV.
Finding Ashton

In this piece, the writer embeds with six female soldiers in Panjshir Province, Afghanistan, and forms an unexpected attachment to the youngest, Senior Airman Ashton Goodman, who will be killed by an IED outside Bagram Air Field four months later.
“Still, God Helps You”: Memories of a Sudanese Child Slave

The harrowing story of a Sudanese boy captured from his village and enslaved by the Janjaweed, only to escape years later into still more harrowing circumstances, as told to the writer by William Akoi Mawwin, now the writer’s informally adopted son.
Circle of Friends

Bereft and directionless, in quiet crisis, the writer travels with photographers Angela Fisher and Carol Beckwith to the remote Omo River region of Ethiopia, gaining an unexpected perspective on aging and loneliness.

V.
On Bibliomancy, Anthropodermic Bibliopegy and the Eating Papers

An essay on books, focusing on the use of books for divination, on rare but extant books bound in human skin, and on the ancient healing practice of eating words written on paper.

Erscheint lt. Verlag	20.4.2015
Reihe/Serie	The Art of the Essay
Vorwort	Bret Anthony Johnston
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
	Literatur ► Essays / Feuilleton
	Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
ISBN-10	1-934137-97-9 / 1934137979
ISBN-13	978-1-934137-97-0 / 9781934137970

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