The Tower and the Ruin
No writer has surpassed the epic achievement of J.R.R. Tolkien, who spent decades refining his Middle-earth--a world that has felt so real to so many readers that it is almost impossible to imagine that any single person could have simply created it, seemingly out of thin air. In The Tower and the Ruin, Michael D. C. Drout takes us deep into Tolkien's genius, allowing us to glimpse the making of not only The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion but also lesser-known books such as The Fall of Gondolin as well as Tolkien's poetry and innovative scholarship.Drout, who has spent decades reading, studying, and teaching Tolkien, allows us to understand the author's methods and to embrace his works as never before. With great erudition and sparkling prose, Drout shows us how Tolkien invented myths, legends, cultures, languages, histories, and an intricate, multivocal narrative. We come to understand how Tolkien drew upon and modified material he found in Beowulf, the Kalevala, and other medieval literature from northern Europe, using the subtle qualities of those famous works as inspiration for his own. We also see the process by which he created the complex form of sorrow that is the primary emotional effect of his mature works, a sadness "blessed without bitterness," carefully woven through a tapestry of themes that has resonated with generations of readers.Sweeping and hugely perceptive--and enhanced throughout by Drout's personal reflections on how Tolkien has shaped his own life and relationships--The Tower and the Ruin illuminates Tolkien anew and will come to be seen as an essential work for anyone who has journeyed to Middle-earth.
The Book of Women's Friendship
As Marilynne Robinson writes in her 1980 novel, Housekeeping, "Having a sister or friend is like sitting at night in a lighted house." Bringing together work by more than 100 writers, The Book of Women's Friendship explores the rich subject of friendship between women from every angle: its particular intensity and miraculous ease, its tendency to wax and wane, its role not only as a comfort and a privilege, but as vital to our health.Friendship has never been more highly debated, and loneliness more prevalent. Yet women's friendships have repeatedly been neglected or minimized in storytelling, fallen by the wayside of male relationships. In the first major anthology dedicated to women's friendship--and the first serious anthology about friendship published in more than three decades--editor Rachel Cooke looks to art to find the words to capture women's platonic love. Compiling selections from novels, poems, diaries, letters, comics, and graphic novels about women's friendship, she places work from a diverse array of artists in conversation across time and place.With excerpts from Jane Austen to Edith Wharton and Virginia Woolf, from Dolly Alderton to Sarah Waters, and from Zadie Smith to Meg Wolitzer, The Book of Women's Friendship celebrates and investigates friendship between women, from first encounters to final farewells, from falling out to making up again. This book takes the shape of a human life, beginning with early efforts at friend-making and -breaking in childhood to chance collisions in adulthood. It contemplates (though not for too long) the flip side of friendship, which is not enmity, but loneliness; celebrates solidarity in all its guises; and ends with loss, the moment of goodbye.Warm, clever, and full of some of the most beautiful writing on friendship ever published, The Book of Women's Friendship is also an act of friendship itself, dedicated to Cooke's best friend, in the end becoming a book full of all the lovely, impossible, unsayable things that one friend might be moved to give to another.
All the Violet Tiaras
Ancient Greece was rich with stories of queer love and genderfluid identity--but what can these ancient stories tell us about our contemporary world?Tales as old as antiquity--whether the love affair of Achilles and Patroclus, the genderfluid Tiresias, or the infamous Heracles--are still capturing our imaginations thousands of years later. But was antiquity's relationship with queer folk more complicated than we now imagine? Historian Jean Menzies dives into the world of queer readings and retellings of Greek mythology, inviting readers to discover the power to be found in remaking these narratives, time and again.From explorations of gender and identity across millennia, to celebrating queer love in its many forms, All the Violet Tiaras carves a space for queer stories to be told with all the complexity and tenderness they deserve--and a goddess or two thrown in for good measure.
Reluctant Medium
Have you ever wondered what happens to your consciousness after your body dies? Probably most people wonder about that at some time. Most religions try to answer that question with various heavenly scenarios or hellish punishments and wars have been fought and people painfully put to death because of disagreements about religious beliefs and dogmas. Pearl Curran believed that she had made contact with the consciousness of a young woman, "Patience Worth" who had lived and died in the 17th century. Together, Pearl Curran and Patience Worth produced hundreds of poems and several novels and plays that were regarded to be high-quality writing, acknowledged by Stanley Braithwaite in his Anthology of Magazine Poetry as some of the best poetry of 1917-1918. While this book may seem to be about communication with spirits, which it is in the overview, it really is about exceptional literature produced by a young woman with barely a grade school education, no interest in writing and whose formative years were spent in Missouri, Texas and Illinois. But she wrote about Medieval England, Victorian England and the time of Jesus Christ, topics she knew little or nothing about and sprinkled some of the writing with archaic words from rural England of more than 300 years ago. As a young girl, Pearl Curran trained to be a singer and pianist and as a grown woman she enjoyed singing, playing piano, seeing silent movies, reading magazines and cooking for her family. She had no interest in language, history, or religion yet the writings of Pearl Curran and Patience Worth are a language and history cornucopia of information about times fast fading from memory. This book is an effort to bring the writing of Pearl Curran and Patience Worth before the public once again so that it will not be forgotten.
Selling Out Santa
Christmas is not just a day or a frame of mind as Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) imparts in Miracle on 34th Street (1947); Christmas is also a vehicle for national mythmaking as an idealising mirror for American cultural and political attitudes of a given moment. Via a case study on Hollywood Christmas films released between 1946 and 1961, Selling Out Santa offers an examination of political pressures on Hollywood in the post-war period and the cultural ramifications of federal involvement in the motion picture industry. As the House Committee on Un-American Activities opened hearings in 1947 and the FBI gathered reports on potential communist subversion in Frank Capra's Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946), Hollywood executives began to bend to the socially conservative pressures of this post-war moment. Using Christmas films as the core of this investigation to identify and analyse changes within the genre as they relate to and reflect changes in the wider cultural and political moment exposes for film scholars, students, and non-specialists how these federal and external pressures on Hollywood moulded these holiday favourites throughout the 1950s and set the social standard for decades of Christmas releases.
The Slicks
A keen, ardent celebration of unbridled female ambition in the work of Taylor Swift and Sylvia Plath In The Slicks, Maggie Nelson positions culture-dominating pop superstar Taylor Swift and feminist cult icon Sylvia Plath as twin hosts of the female urge toward wanting hard, working hard, and pouring forth--and as twinned targets of patriarchy's ancient urge to disparage, trivialize, and discipline creative work by women rooted in autobiography and abundance. A buoyant melding of popular culture and literary criticism, The Slicks is a captivating and unexpected assessment of two iconic female artists by one of the most revered and influential critics of her generation.
Reluctant Medium
Have you ever wondered what happens to your consciousness after your body dies? Probably most people wonder about that at some time. Most religions try to answer that question with various heavenly scenarios or hellish punishments and wars have been fought and people painfully put to death because of disagreements about religious beliefs and dogmas. Pearl Curran believed that she had made contact with the consciousness of a young woman, "Patience Worth" who had lived and died in the 17th century. Together, Pearl Curran and Patience Worth produced hundreds of poems and several novels and plays that were regarded to be high-quality writing, acknowledged by Stanley Braithwaite in his Anthology of Magazine Poetry as some of the best poetry of 1917-1918. While this book may seem to be about communication with spirits, which it is in the overview, it really is about exceptional literature produced by a young woman with barely a grade school education, no interest in writing and whose formative years were spent in Missouri, Texas and Illinois. But she wrote about Medieval England, Victorian England and the time of Jesus Christ, topics she knew little or nothing about and sprinkled some of the writing with archaic words from rural England of more than 300 years ago. As a young girl, Pearl Curran trained to be a singer and pianist and as a grown woman she enjoyed singing, playing piano, seeing silent movies, reading magazines and cooking for her family. She had no interest in language, history, or religion yet the writings of Pearl Curran and Patience Worth are a language and history cornucopia of information about times fast fading from memory. This book is an effort to bring the writing of Pearl Curran and Patience Worth before the public once again so that it will not be forgotten.
Racial Fictions
A powerful critique of the racial myths that shape our world Drawing on a rich tapestry of historical analysis, literary criticism, and cultural theory, Hazel V. Carby interrogates our racial fictions, which have been constructed, maintained, and weaponized across centuries to justify systems of domination and exploitation. Traversing temporalities and global boundaries, Racial Fictions reveals the inter-connectedness of America's domestic racial struggles and international colonial ambitions. Carby challenges readers to confront uncomfortable truths about the persistence of white supremacy, the violence embedded in historical memory, and the silencing of marginalized voices. The result is a profound exploration of the intricate and enduring legacies of race, imperialism, and violence in the formation of modern identities and nation-states.
Alt 36: Queer Theory in Film & Fiction
ALT 36 turns a "queer eye" on Africa, offering provocative (re-)readings of texts to position formerly erased sexualities and contemporary sexual expression among Africans on the continent, and abroad. Debates on the future of the African continent and the role of gender identities in these visions are increasingly present in literary criticism forums as African writers become bolder in exploring the challenges they face and celebrating gender diversity in the writing of short stories, novels, poetry, plays and films. Controversies over the rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex, Queer (LGBTIQ) communities in Africa, as elsewhere, continue inthe context of criminalization and/or intimidation of these groups. Residual colonial moralizing and contemporary western identity norms and politics vie with longstanding polyvalent indigenous sexual expression. In addition to traditional media, the new social media have gained importance, both as sources of information exchange and as sites of virtual construction of gender identities. As with many such contentious issues, the variety of responses to the"state of the question" is strikingly visible across the continent. In this issue of ALT, guest editor John Hawley has sampled the ongoing conversations, in both African writing and in the analysis of contemporary African cinema, to show how queer studies can break with old concepts and theories and point the way to new gender perspectives on literary and cinematic output. This volume also includes a non-themed section of Featured Articles anda Literary Supplement. Guest Editor: John C. Hawley is Professor in the Department of English, Santa Clara University Series Editor: Ernest N. Emenyonu is Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint, USA. Reviews Editor: Obi Nwakanma
37 More Voices
Beyond the everyday, what hidden wisdom awaits in the tapestry of our lives? Picking up where Volume 1, 28 Voices, left off, this captivating second collection of essays invites you on a profound exploration of discovery and reflection.Through a diverse array of personal narratives, these pages delve into the myriad ways we learn and grow. From the quiet revelations of self-awareness to the complex dynamics of family and friendship, discover the profound impact of connection. Uncover unexpected insights from the loyalty of pets, the discipline of hobbies, and the expansive perspectives gained from travel and exploration. Ultimately, these essays illuminate how every experience-large or small-contributes to the ever-evolving landscapes of our personal philosophies and worldviews.Join us for a journey of introspection that celebrates the richness of life's lessons, beautifully told.
The Titanic Conspiracy
The sinking of the RMS Titanic in April 1912 is one of the most documented disasters in maritime history, yet the questions it raised have never fully gone away. The Titanic Conspiracy examines the theories, inconsistencies, and unresolved questions surrounding the ship's fate, from allegations of an insurance fraud scheme to claims about the identity of the ship itself. It is an engaging exploration of one of the twentieth century's most enduring historical mysteries.The book surveys the major conspiracy theories in turn, presenting the evidence for and against each with a clear and even-handed approach. It covers the circumstances of the voyage, the actions of the owners and crew, the controversial survivor accounts, and the questions raised by subsequent investigations and wreck discoveries. Whether or not readers come away convinced by any particular theory, they will gain a much richer understanding of the Titanic's story beyond the standard historical account.Contents: Reader review: "Gripping from start to finish. I have read a lot about the Titanic but this book introduced me to angles I had never considered. Well researched and genuinely thought-provoking." -- Caroline M.This title is well placed in history, maritime, and true mystery sections. It appeals to readers interested in the Titanic as well as those drawn to broader questions of historical conspiracy and cover-up. A strong choice for general bookshops and public libraries.Order now.
A Shorter Ulysses
This volume is a major event in both the James Joyce and Anthony Burgess literary annals. It not any marks the first publication of Burgess's Shorter Ulysses, which was only recently discovered in the Burgess archives, but also the first republication this century of Burgess's extraordinary musical play Blooms of Dublin, based of course on Ulysses. The play has not been available in print for 38 years. Indeed it was only once performed (but as a radio production) on the centenary of Joyce's birth on February 2nd 1982. Burgess's A Shorter Finnegans Wake, published in 1966, is still much loved and probably enjoyed more than Joyce's full length--and very difficult--novel. A Shorter Ulysses follows the same formula of being both an abridgement of the text (actually quite an intense one) and the provision of comments interspersed within the text. A Shorter Ulysses is introduced by Burgess's biographer and Director of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Andrew Biswell. It also contains Burgess's foreword to the BCA edition of Ulysses published in 1981-- a two thousand word piece which manages to capture the very essence of Joyce's masterwork and provides a perfect introduction to the novel, particularly for new readers. So, within these pages, there is a feast for Joyce and Burgess scholars as well as a totally accessible gateway to Ulysses for readers who perhaps have yet to dive into the deep waters of one of the most iconic--and of course controversial--novels of modern times.
Bar Nicanor
A comprehensive anthology of writings by Belgium's leading Dadaist, Cl矇ment PansaersAfter entering the literary world under the pseudonym Julius Krekel, the Belgian poet Cl矇ment Pansaers underwent a series of revelatory events that resulted in his rebirth as a Dadaist poet writing under his own name. Pansaers went on to produce a body of poetic work that earned the admiration of everyone from Ezra Pound to Tristan Tzara.Bar Nicanor collects all of the reborn Pansaers' work, including the "Lent Meditations" and Apology for Laziness; the even more radical books published under the banner of Dada, such at the titular Bar Nicanor; and the posthumous I Blennorrhage and Programmatic Fermata for Young Orangutan. Also included are the essays he published in various journals, including "DADA and Me," in which he signaled of the end of the Dada movement, and what remains of the novel he had been working on at the end of his life, Lamprido, based on the characters of himself and his good friend Carl Einstein.Cl矇ment Pansaers (1885-1922) turned to poetry after abandoning his career as an Egyptologist. Despite his early death from Hodgkin's disease, his poetry is now recognized as some of the most radical of the Dada movement.
Forced by Circumstance
A landmark collection of the work of pioneering Chicana scholar, Norma Alarc籀oacute;n. Forced by Circumstance gathers in one volume foundational essays by, and interviews with one of the most highly esteemed intellectuals in Chicana/o, Latina/o, and Feminist Studies. Reading Alarc籀n's essays-from her early work on Mexican feminist writer Rosario Castellanos to her recent reflections on the carceral state and the political debacle that our contemporary situation presents--not only offers readers a sense of the intellectual trajectory of one of our most important Chicana feminist thinkers but also brings to a new generation of scholars and readers classic essays in Chicana/o Studies, Cultural Studies, Feminist Studies, and Literary Studies.
GrantBook - From Dream to Grant
This book introduces Sardor Tukhtaev, a dedicated student of international law passionate about human rights. With extensive academic achievements, international experience, and leadership roles, he exemplifies commitment to social justice and global human rights issues. The narrative highlights his active participation in international forums, competitions, and youth councils, reflecting his desire to promote human dignity. His pursuit of an LLM in Human Rights at the University of Birmingham stems from a deep commitment to advancing legal frameworks that protect individual rights, especially in Central Asia. Sardor's journey of academic excellence, leadership, and international engagement demonstrates his potential to contribute significantly to the global human rights movement. His aspiration to work within international law reinforces the importance of well-educated advocates dedicated to shaping laws that uphold human dignity and justice worldwide. This inspiring account underscores the role of persistent effort, leadership, and international outlook in fostering positive societal change.
Clear My Name-Taiwan, Hong Kong, Ukraine
Clear My Name-Taiwan, Hong Kong, Ukraine is a poetry collection of 57 pieces, some written in prose form, others more experimental in style.In Clear My Name-Taiwan, Hong Kong, Ukraine, C. J. Anderson-Wu offers a stirring poetic testament to the resilience of identity amid the tremors of history. With a voice both lyrical and unflinching, she traverses the landscapes of three regions-each marked by conflict, memory, and the pursuit of self-definition. Her verses do not merely recount events; they illuminate the shadows cast by silence, giving form to stories often left untold.This collection moves deftly between the intimate and the communal, revealing how the act of naming-of claiming one's truth-is itself a form of resistance. Anderson-Wu's poetry becomes a vessel for remembrance, a shield against erasure, and a call to recognize the dignity embedded in every struggle for voice and place.To read these poems is to enter a space where borders blur and belonging deepens, where the personal becomes political, and where the reclamation of one's name becomes a reclamation of one's humanity.
The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings
A collection of Edgar Allan Poe's writings, including The Fall of the House of Usher--the inspiration for the Netflix series from Mike Flanagan, the director of The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass! This selection of critical writings, short fiction and poetry demonstrates Poe's intense interest in aesthetic issues and the astonishing power and imagination with which he probed the darkest corners of the human mind. "The Fall of the House of Usher" describes the final hours of a family tormented by tragedy and the legacy of the past. In "The Tell Tale Heart", a murderer's insane delusions threaten to betray him, while stories such as "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "The Cask of Amontillado" explore extreme states of decadence, fear and hate. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
The Storm Inside
The Storm Within is a collection of poetry and prose by the high school students of Orange County, Texas in response to climate change, inequality, and natural disasters. The collection includes heart-felt poetry, compelling fiction, memoir, and academic essays from along the front lines of climate change in the southeastern corner of Texas. These young people share their truths and stories to document and reshape the rapidly changing world around them.
If I Must Die
"If I must die, let it bring hope, let it be a tale." This rich, elegiac compilation of work from the late Palestinian poet and professor, Refaat Alareer, brings together his marvelous poetry and deeply human writing about literature, teaching, politics, and family. The renowned poet and literature professor Refaat Alareer was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City alongside his brother, sister, and nephews in December 2023. He was just forty-four years old, but had already established a worldwide reputation that was further enhanced when, in the wake of his death, the poem that gives this book its title became a global sensation. "If I Must Die" is included here, alongside Refaat's other poetry.Refaat wrote extensively about a range of topics: teaching Shakespeare and the way Shylock could be appreciated by young Palestinian students; the horrors of living under repeated brutal assaults in Gaza, one of which, in 2014, killed another of his brothers; and the generosity of Palestinians to each other, fighting, in the face of it all, to be the one paying at the supermarket checkout.Such pieces, some never before published, have been curated here by one of Refaat's closest friends and collaborators. This collection forms a fitting testament to a remarkable writer, educator, and activist, one whose voice will not be silenced by death but will continue to assert the power of learning and humanism in the face of barbarity.
The American Sentence
A compelling quest to locate a history and poetics of the American sentence, this book applies four stages of communication to the story of American writing - the sermon, the telegraph, the newspaper and the screen - to ask what is an American sentence and how has it changed? While sentences have become the subject of their own form, literary histories, cultural narratives, and personal writings have not centred on the sentence as a singular object. There is no history of the sentence. This book addresses that absence, reviewing American style through American literary history for evolutionary moments in the development of the American sentence from the Puritans to the present day. Reading sentences from writers as diverse as Benjamin Franklin, Henry James, Gertrude Stein, Lydia Davis, Cormac McCarthy and Colson Whitehead, we find ourselves asking if a poetics of the American sentence actually exists, whether good sentences are the reason we read, and what the future of the American sentence might be.
Portrait of an Island on Fire
A deeply moving and revelatory reading experience, the essays collected in Portrait of an Island on Fire form a searing account of Mauritius at a crucial moment in its history. Unceasing in its critiques of racist, patriarchal abuses of power, in its unpicking of the ills at the core of contemporary Mauritian society and their roots, the collection is a milestone in thinking about the lasting social and political effects of colonialism and how they play out at the level of government policy, the handling of environmental issues, in schools, in hospitals, in families, in language. For all its well-placed anger, Ariel Saramandi's sparklingly intelligent and intimate debut is full of love and momentum - a push for a better future for Mauritius and, by extension, for the world.
Sceptical Always
A collection of yarns, politically incorrect opinions and experiences by a larrikin anti-establishment professor of geology. He has lived life and seen too much of totalitarianism and fundamentalism, be it in politics, religion or science, and seeks evidence and not propaganda. As a scientist, his training has made him sceptical and critical of everything and he is intolerant of intolerance. His university life has been intertwined with a corporate and bush life. Any child who becomes apoplectic about the internet dropping out for an hour needs a reality check and should read about their contemporaries in other countries.PROFESSOR IAN PLIMER is Australia's best-known geologist and Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne, where he was Professor and Head of Earth Sciences (1991-2005). He is currently a director of various Hancock Prospecting companies. He previously served as Professor and Head of Geology at the University of Newcastle (1985-1991), Professor of Mining Geology at the University of Adelaide (2006-2012), and Research Professor of Ore Deposits at Ludwig Maximilians Universit瓣t, Munich (1991). He also held positions at the University of New England, the University of New South Wales, and Macquarie University. Plimer has published over 140 scientific papers and co-edited the five-volume Encyclopedia of Geology.
Stranger Than Fiction
One of the Washington Post's 50 Best Nonfiction Books of 2024 A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice A Boston Globe Best Book of 2024 "Ambitious, intelligent, and happily unpretentious." --Louis Menand, The New Yorker "Convincing, idiosyncratic and often felicitous." --Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times Book ReviewA legendary editor's reckoning with the twentieth-century novel and the urgent messages it sends. "How can we live differently?" a young woman urgently demands in Virginia Woolf's novel The Years. It is the 1930s, war and death are in the air, but her question was asked again and again in the course of a century where things changed fast and changed all the time. The century brought world wars, revolutions, automobiles, movies, and the internet, votes for women, death camps. The century brought questions. Novelists in the twentieth century had a question of their own: how can we write a novel as startling and unforeseen as the world we live in? Again and again they did, transforming the novel as the century remade the world. Imagine the history of the twentieth-century novel recounted with the urgency and intimacy of a novel. That's what Edwin Frank, the legendary editor who has run the New York Review Books publishing imprint since its inception, does in Stranger Than Fiction. With penetrating insight and originality, Frank introduces us to books, some famous, some little-known, from the whole course of the century and from around the world. Starting with Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground of 1864, Frank shows how its twitchy, self-undermining, and never-satisfied narrator established a voice that would echo through the coming century. He illuminates the political vision of H. G. Wells's science fiction, Colette and Andre Gide's subversions of traditional gender roles, and Gertrude Stein's untethering of the American sentence. He describes the monumental ambition of books such as Mrs. Dalloway, The Magic Mountain, and The Man Without Qualities to rebuild a world of human possibility upon the ruins of World War I and explores how Japan's Natsume Sōseki and Nigeria's Chinua Achebe broke open European models to reflect their own, distinct histories and experience. Here too are Vasily Grossman, Anna Banti, and Elsa Morante reckoning in specific ways with the traumas of World War II, while later chapters range from Marguerite Yourcenar and V. S. Naipaul to Gabriel Garc穩a M獺rquez and W. G. Sebald. The story as a whole is one of fearless, often reckless exploration, as well as unfathomable desolation. Throughout, we discover the power of the novel to reinvent itself, to find a way for itself, to live differently. Stranger Than Fiction offers a new vision of the history and art of the novel and of a dark and dazzling time in whose light and shadow we still stand.
Encyclopedia of Mythical Creatures - Southeast Asian Mythology
Unveil the Mythology of Thailand, Bali, Vietnam and much more!Journey through sun-drenched temples, jungle-clad mountains, and moonlit islands with the Encyclopedia of Mythical Creatures: Southeast Asian Mythology Volume. This beautifully illustrated bestiary unveils a realm where forest spirits whisper through bamboo groves, serpent kings guard rivers of fire, and ghostly maidens wander between devotion and vengeance. From the sacred plains of Cambodia to the volcano-shrouded shores of Indonesia, each page breathes with the pulse of ancient belief - a world where ancestors, demons, and gods share the same breath as the living.Discover Legendary Spirits and Divine Beasts: Meet Banaspati, the fiery guardian of the forest; Rangda, Bali's terrifying queen of witches; and Phi Am, the shadow that suffocates sleepers in the night. Encounter the seductive Pontianak, who drifts beneath moonlight seeking retribution, and the noble Phaya Naga, serpent lord of the Mekong who commands the river's tides. Wander through Thailand's haunted villages, Malaysia's misted jungles, and the Philippines' enchanted coasts, where Aswang, Bakunawa, and Tikbalang still stir the imaginations of storytellers. Rooted in the animist traditions of the region and shaped by Buddhist, Hindu, and indigenous beliefs, these tales illuminate humanity's oldest bond with nature - reverence, fear, and wonder entwined.Breathtaking Art for Every Spirit, Demon, and Guardian: Each creature is reborn through luminous illustrations - capturing the glow of temple lanterns, the shimmer of tropical rain, and the eerie calm of jungles at dusk. From the serpent coils of Ngư Tinh to the golden eyes of ?ng Ba Mươi, every portrait radiates color, movement, and emotion. The art celebrates the living mythology of Southeast Asia - where every breeze carries prayer, and every shadow may conceal a soul.Inside this book, you'll find: In-depth profiles of mythical beings such as Rangda, Banaspati, Phi Am, Pontianak, Phaya Naga, Bakunawa, Aswang, and Tikbalang - among dozens more.Cultural insights into how Southeast Asian mythology shaped temples, festivals, rites, and moral traditions across the region.Exquisite artwork that brings to life the creatures, spirits, and elemental forces that still haunt Southeast Asia's imagination.A perfect reference for artists, historians, worldbuilders, and lovers of mythology from Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Encyclopedia of Mythical Creatures - Southeast Asian Mythology
Unveil the Mythology of Thailand, Bali, Vietnam and much more!Journey through sun-drenched temples, jungle-clad mountains, and moonlit islands with the Encyclopedia of Mythical Creatures: Southeast Asian Mythology Volume. This beautifully illustrated bestiary unveils a realm where forest spirits whisper through bamboo groves, serpent kings guard rivers of fire, and ghostly maidens wander between devotion and vengeance. From the sacred plains of Cambodia to the volcano-shrouded shores of Indonesia, each page breathes with the pulse of ancient belief - a world where ancestors, demons, and gods share the same breath as the living.Discover Legendary Spirits and Divine Beasts: Meet Banaspati, the fiery guardian of the forest; Rangda, Bali's terrifying queen of witches; and Phi Am, the shadow that suffocates sleepers in the night. Encounter the seductive Pontianak, who drifts beneath moonlight seeking retribution, and the noble Phaya Naga, serpent lord of the Mekong who commands the river's tides. Wander through Thailand's haunted villages, Malaysia's misted jungles, and the Philippines' enchanted coasts, where Aswang, Bakunawa, and Tikbalang still stir the imaginations of storytellers. Rooted in the animist traditions of the region and shaped by Buddhist, Hindu, and indigenous beliefs, these tales illuminate humanity's oldest bond with nature - reverence, fear, and wonder entwined.Breathtaking Art for Every Spirit, Demon, and Guardian: Each creature is reborn through luminous illustrations - capturing the glow of temple lanterns, the shimmer of tropical rain, and the eerie calm of jungles at dusk. From the serpent coils of Ngư Tinh to the golden eyes of ?ng Ba Mươi, every portrait radiates color, movement, and emotion. The art celebrates the living mythology of Southeast Asia - where every breeze carries prayer, and every shadow may conceal a soul.Inside this book, you'll find: In-depth profiles of mythical beings such as Rangda, Banaspati, Phi Am, Pontianak, Phaya Naga, Bakunawa, Aswang, and Tikbalang - among dozens more.Cultural insights into how Southeast Asian mythology shaped temples, festivals, rites, and moral traditions across the region.Exquisite artwork that brings to life the creatures, spirits, and elemental forces that still haunt Southeast Asia's imagination.A perfect reference for artists, historians, worldbuilders, and lovers of mythology from Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Encyclopedia of Mythical Creatures - Yokai & Japanese Mythology
Unveil the Mythology of Japan!Step into the lantern-lit realms of misty mountains, moonlit rivers, and haunted temples with the Encyclopedia of Mythical Creatures: Yokai & Japanese Mythology Volume. This beautifully illustrated bestiary unveils a world where spirits dwell in every shadow, foxes dance between illusion and truth, and ancient gods whisper through thunder, flame, and rain. From the snow-capped peaks of Hokkaido to the sacred forests of Kyoto, each page reveals the pulse of a land where beauty and terror walk hand in hand, and where the unseen governs the seen.Discover Legendary Beings and Timeless Spirits: Meet the nine-tailed Kitsune who bends hearts and destiny, the mischievous Kappa who lurks beneath still waters, and the fearsome Oni who tests human courage. Cross paths with the mournful Yuki-onna, the seductive Jorōgumo, and the prophetic Amabie who rises from the sea to warn of plague. Wander mountain passes where the Tengu guard hidden shrines, and misted cemeteries where the Shinigami collect wandering souls. Rooted in Shinto reverence for nature, Buddhist visions of karma, and the storytelling spirit of Edo folklore, these tales illuminate Japan's eternal dialogue between purity and corruption, devotion and desire, life and the lingering afterlife.
Encyclopedia of Mythical Creatures - Yokai & Japanese Mythology
Unveil the Mythology of Japan!Step into the lantern-lit realms of misty mountains, moonlit rivers, and haunted temples with the Encyclopedia of Mythical Creatures: Yokai & Japanese Mythology Volume. This beautifully illustrated bestiary unveils a world where spirits dwell in every shadow, foxes dance between illusion and truth, and ancient gods whisper through thunder, flame, and rain. From the snow-capped peaks of Hokkaido to the sacred forests of Kyoto, each page reveals the pulse of a land where beauty and terror walk hand in hand, and where the unseen governs the seen.Discover Legendary Beings and Timeless Spirits: Meet the nine-tailed Kitsune who bends hearts and destiny, the mischievous Kappa who lurks beneath still waters, and the fearsome Oni who tests human courage. Cross paths with the mournful Yuki-onna, the seductive Jorōgumo, and the prophetic Amabie who rises from the sea to warn of plague. Wander mountain passes where the Tengu guard hidden shrines, and misted cemeteries where the Shinigami collect wandering souls. Rooted in Shinto reverence for nature, Buddhist visions of karma, and the storytelling spirit of Edo folklore, these tales illuminate Japan's eternal dialogue between purity and corruption, devotion and desire, life and the lingering afterlife.
South Carolina Review:
Volume 46, no. 2 of South Carolina Review is a themed issue entitled Locating African American Literature.
South Carolina Review:
Since 1968, The South Carolina Review (SCR) has published fiction, poetry, interviews, unpublished letters and manuscripts, essays, and reviews from literary giants such as Joyce Carol Oates and Kurt Vonnegut as well as eminent critics such as Cleanth Brooks and Marjorie Perloff. SCR celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2018. This special themed issue focuses on the Spectral South.
Fascist Directive
Fascist Directive reveals changes in Ezra Pound's prose writing resulting from his excitement over Mussolini's use of Italian cultural heritage to build the modern Fascist state. Drawing on archival material and periodical contributions, Catherine E. Paul delves into the work of the most notorious American in Italy in the 1930s and 1940s.
The Dust of a Contact That Is Everywhere
the dust of a contact that is everywhere moves between theoretical reflection and aesthetic practice through essays, fragments, daybook entries, and lyrical experiments. It explores attention, the temporality of lyric lines, and the ethical implications of how we read, write, and live beside others. Collage and drift function as both method and ethic; friendship becomes a form of nonhierarchical inquiry. Drawing on artists and thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, and Toru Takemitsu, the book is a capacious and intimate work of reading understood as a form of radical attentiveness.
South Carolina Review:
Since 1968, The South Carolina Review (SCR) has published fiction, poetry, interviews, unpublished letters and manuscripts, essays, and reviews from literary giants such as Joyce Carol Oates and Kurt Vonnegut as well as eminent critics such as Cleanth Brooks and Marjorie Perloff.
Zen in the Art of Writing
Discover the inimitable genius of Ray Bradbury as he explores the art of writing, the power of creativity, and the timeless appeal of storytelling in this collection of essays that are part masterclass, part memoir, featuring a new introduction by Dan Chaon. In Zen in the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury's love for his craft shines. With signature wisdom, wit, and verve, Bradbury delves into his prolific writing career, exploring the creation of countless stories, novels, plays, movies, and more that have stood the test of time. Written over a thirty-year period, these inspirational essays insist that there is a "deep well of explosive self-revelation" in all of us waiting to be released through the process of writing. Bradbury's essays illuminate the passion and intellect of one of the most inventive and prolific artists of the 20th century. He reveals how writers can find their own unique path to developing their voice and style. Zen celebrates the art of writing that will delight, impassion, and inspire, but most of all, it celebrates life.
Karen Blixen's Search for Self
In Karen Blixen's Search for Self, Patti M. Marxsen presents a twenty-first-century reconsideration of Blixen's iconic memoir Out of Africa, originally published in 1937 and now regarded as a classic of twentieth-century literature. The methodology of this "book about a book" draws on seasoned historical perspectives of European colonial activities in early twentieth-century Africa as it engages Blixen's letters, tales, speeches, interviews, the photographic record of her various personas, memoir literature of others who knew her, and three generations of scholarship, including pointed postcolonial critiques. Mixing scholarly research with personal reflection, Marxsen recounts an inspiring tale of a writer's evolution, along with thoughtful analysis of the art and craft of memoir. As a modern woman both trapped and liberated by privilege, Karen Christentze Dinesen Blixen experienced considerable personal and financial challenges during her years living in colonial Kenya (1914-1931), a period that Marxsen approaches as a belated coming-of-age journey rather than a romantic tale. Blixen returned to Denmark at age forty-six, bankrupt and in a state of physical and mental fragility with no idea about what she would do or how she would live in a bourgeois society that she viewed as "incarceration." Only when Blixen set out to reinvent herself with the "liberating mask" of the pseudonym Isak Dinesen did she begin to realize her potential as a storyteller and find the strength to develop her uniquely poetic narrative voice by writing about her African years. Blixen's process of loss and recovery through writing constitutes the frame of Marxsen's book, just as it constitutes the frame of Out of Africa. Marxsen traces Blixen's inner life through letters and writings to probe the origins of her imaginative power, her instinctive multiculturalism (considered "eccentric" in colonial Kenya), and the feminism of a creative woman in a new century. Marxsen continues the story through the contested legacies of the book, including its serving as the basis for the acclaimed, Academy Award-winning film released in 1985. This new study of Blixen's widely read memoir, which has remained consistently in print for almost ninety years, broadens understandings of the author's complex self-realization, the skill of her literary art, and the book's evolving afterlife.
Rubble Masonry
Rubble Masonry is a collection of lyric essays that takes its title from the practice of stone masons who, rather than using materials cut to ideal measurements, work with found rocks' natural shapes. It combines the rich images and musical language of poetry with prose's capacity to share personal narratives and information from wide-ranging sources. Diverse content and innovative form distinguish a book that explores the places in which its author, Rose McLarney, finds herself as a woman from the mountain South--in history, national dialogues, public spaces, the natural world, and lineages that extend beyond an individual's life on earth.
Us, Now
Listen for the hum beneath the everyday. In nearly fifty stories-from realist corners to speculative edges-Us, Now collects tales that begin with a quiet, persistent feeling: an overlooked truth, a thread between strangers, a small wonder that becomes everything. These pieces reflect the moments that define us now-epiphanies, curiosities, and the extraordinary tucked into the commonplace. Follow the hum, because what you ignore today might change you tomorrow.
Speculative Insight
Collecting the essays in Speculative Insight: A Journal of Space, Magic and Footnote from July-December 2024, plus a bonus essay by Bogi Takacs. The essays explore aspects of science fiction and fantasy such as time travel as a way to deal with trauma, Terry Pratchett's male characters, and what makes something a cosy fantasy. Authors include Tansy Rayner Roberts, Signe Maene, Phoebe Wagner, Lee Murray, Rjurik Davidson, Amy Salley, Paula Aamli, Mary Fan, Christine Yunn-Yu Sun, Dove Cooper, and Bogi Takacs.
Speculative Insight
This book collects all of the essays published by Speculative Insight across 2024, including the two bonus essays by Lisa L Hannett and Bogi Takacs. Topics include Terry Pratchett's male characters, Murderbot's love of soap opera, what makes something a cosy fantasy, and much more.Authors include Cheryl Morgan, Joanne Anderton, Kemi Ashing-Giwa, Amy Sjoquist, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Octavia Cade, Liz Barr, Joyce Chng, Celia Lake, Andrew Dana Hudson, Nina Niskanen, Lisa L Hannett, Signe Maene, Phoebe Wagner, Lee Murray, Rjurik Davidson, Amy Salley, Paula Aamli, Mary Fan, Christine Yunn-Yu Sun, Dove Cooper, and Bogi Takacs.
Up South in the Ozarks
The Ozarks is a place that defies easy categorization. Sprawling across much of Missouri and Arkansas and smaller parts of Oklahoma and Kansas, it is caught on the margins of America's larger cultural regions: part southern, part midwestern, and maybe even a little bit western. For generations Ozarkers have been more likely than most other Americans to live near or below the poverty line-a situation that has often subjected them to unflattering stereotypes. In short, the Ozarks has been a marginal place populated by marginalized people. Historian Brooks Blevins has spent his life studying and writing about the people of his native regions-the South and the Ozarks. He has been in the vanguard of a new and vibrant Ozarks Studies movement that has worked to refract the stories of Ozarkers through a more realistic and less exotic lens. In Up South in the Ozarks: Dispatches from the Margins, Blevins introduces us with humor and fairness to mostly unseen lives of the past and present: southern gospel singing schools and ballad collectors, migratory cotton pickers and backroad country storekeepers, fireworks peddlers and impoverished diarists. Part historical and part journalistic, Blevins's essays combine the scholarly sensibilities of a respected historian with the insights of someone raised in rural hill country. His stories of marginalized characters often defy stereotype. They entertain as much as they educate. And most of them originate in the same place Blevins does: up south in the Ozarks.
Speculative Insight
Collecting the essays from the first six months of the journal Speculative Insight: A Journal of Space, Magic and Footnotes. Essays range across a wide variety of topics, including Star Trek fandom and what counts as historical fiction, why readers love Murderbot and Joan of Arc as a lady knight. The book also includes a bonus essay by Lisa L Hannett about new motherhood and the lack of mothers in space. Authors include Cheryl Morgan, Joanne Anderton, Kemi Ashing-Giwa, Amy Sjoquist, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Octavia Cade, Liz Barr, Joyce Chng, Celia Lake, Andrew Dana Hudson, Nina Niskanen, and Lisa L Hannett.
Speculative Insight
Collecting the essays in Speculative Insight: A Journal of Space, Magic and Footnote from January and June 2025, as well as a bonus essay by Lee Murray ONZM. Topics include an exploration of "quiet fiction", Terry Pratchett's male characters, the predominance of ethnically Chinese writers in South East Asian speculative fiction, national myth-making in The Lord of the Rings, and more. Authors include Nina Niskanen, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Ng Yi-Sheng, E.D.E bell, V.J Knipe, Abby Roberts, Emilie Morscheck, Kyle Tam, Val Nolan, Nick Hubble, and Lee Murray.
Louisa May Alcott: Little Women Map
Much of the beloved novel Little Women takes place in a setting that clearly reflects Concord, Massachusetts, as the town appeared around 1860, when Louisa May Alcott lived there. This richly illustrated literary map invites you to explore both real locations and the fictional settings that emerge in the story. On the reverse side of the map, you can also follow Amy and Laurie's journeys through Europe.
Memory
A poet's spacious exploration of time, memory, and art, in homage to Bernadette Mayer. A spiritual homage to Bernadette Mayer's monumental artwork of the same title, Dorothea Lasky's Memory is a cycle of "poet's essays" stirred by two profound questions. What constitutes personhood and consciousness? What memories get lost, and why? Expansive in her quest for answers, Lasky launches an inspired investigation of the forces that form our lives and deepest senses of ourselves. She identifies three dimensions of memory--ancestral, personal, and poetic--and in her singularly clear voice, undertakes to enter into their mysteries. From those recesses, she returns with a wide-ranging collection of essays that like lyric poems find the universal inside the particular. Memory reflects on the banal; private emotions and historical trauma; dear departed poets (Diane di Prima, Lucie Brock-Broido); her father's battle with Alzheimer's; and cultural events that have become charged sites of collective reminiscence (the moon landing, the music of Neutral Milk Hotel). Other pieces face the flip side of memory, asking what's left where memory is absent, and what's "real" beyond the horizon of death. The book closes with "Time, the Rose, and the Moon," an ars poetica published here in English for the first time, which offers the ancient symbol of the Ouroboros as a figure for the nonlinear processes of time, memory, and art. Like Mayer before her, Lasky reveals memory to be huge and haunting, as she accumulates impressions that challenge the very possibility of fixed meaning. "Every rose has the scent of death," she writes. "And poetry is a perfume. That will stay on your body forever.... Whatever happens this time around, remember that."
Fire Ants
That's your first lesson in East Texas-where words stretch like summer days and stories run deeper than the Red River itself. In Fire Ants, O'Banion delivers a witty, unvarnished portrait of growing up in that forgotten corner of the map where Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana blur together-Texarkana, the town that can't quite decide which state it belongs to, or if it even wants to.Born from the ashes of an offhand remark about "a man from nowhere," these essays took root and refused to die-like the stubborn "far aints" of their title. What began as a detour from a stalled novel became a vibrant, darkly funny, and deeply human collection about small-town oddities, family legacies, fried turkeys gone wrong, four-wheeler flips dubbed "903ers," and the peculiar beauty of a place that exists halfway between myth and memory.These aren't stories of oil barons or tumbleweeds. They're stories of dirt bikes, church picnics, and the subtle heartbreak of realizing your hometown will never make Garden & Gun. From chicken magnates to high school beauty queens, from ER nurses to backyard philosophers, the voices in Fire Ants hum with regional humor, contradiction, and tenderness.
A Man Without a Country
The last of the canonical Kurt Vonnegut books, A Man Without a Country spent eight weeks on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list, selling over a quarter-million copies This 20th anniversary edition features a new introduction by Lewis Black. "For all those who have lived with Vonnegut in their imaginations . . . this is what he is like in person."-USA Today "The America I loved still exists, if not in the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House of Representatives, or the media. The America I loved still exists at the front desks of our public libraries."-Kurt Vonnegut, from A Man Without a Country The closest Kurt Vonnegut ever came to writing his autobiography, A Man Without a Country is part memoir, part social and political commentary, and part riveting personal conversation with an old friend. An undeniably moving and unique return of the literary grandmaster to form. A Man Without a Country features Vonnegut's coming of age, his war experiences, his life as an artist, and the hilariously funny and razor-sharp way of understanding things that helped him get through it all. Some Vonnegut jewels in A Man without a Country "If I die--God forbid--I would like to go to heaven to ask somebody in charge up there, 'Hey, what was the good news and what was the bad news?""To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.""I asked former Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton what he thought of our great victory over Iraq and he said, 'Mohammed Ali versus Mr. Rogers.'"And finally, on the subject of the condition of the soul of America today: "What has happened to us?"Plentifully illustrated with the author's signature woodcut aphorisms, which appear in the book in blue, A Man Without a Country is possibly Vonnegut's most intimate book, and certainly one of his best.
City of Toys
A genre-defying debut that distills memoir, cultural criticism, and poetic inquiry into a kaleidoscopic meditation on motherhood, memory, art, and transformation. Composed in a postpartum blur and finessed as Lesley Jenike settled into established motherhood, the essays in City of Toys careen from exteriority to interiority, from high to low culture, and from the manufactured to the natural world, all on a quest to understand creativity, mothering, and how art drives and shapes us. With madcap acuity, Jenike casts her eye on cultural flash points from Harambe the gorilla to Steven Spielberg and Ada Lovelace to Yayoi Kusama. At times she doubles back to her own experience as a young performer, and at others hurtles into her children's possible futures, when AI starts to dream, imagination is commodified, and the polar bear drowns. All the while she wonders what we owe our children and what we believe (rightly or wrongly) our children owe us. Fascinated by creativity and peopled by dolls, automatons, robots, ghosts, puppets, and historical figures, this exuberant and devastating debut asks, What world are we building, and what are we tearing down?
