Issue 17: Books, Books, Books

“My mother’s house has always overflowed with questioning and beloved books, and it is where I learned my single most important truth: humans lead storied lives. Humans labor, love, hate and die by a story. Stories help make meaning and order of messy, fragmented lives. So, we had better question the stories we read and tell, because they shape our experience and society. Stories can bring us to the depths of our humanity by relating us to ourselves, other creatures, other worlds. Or, as Wordsworth told it — and my autodidact mother would agree — stories can murder to dissect.”

Genevieve Betts is the author of the poetry collection An Unwalled City (Prolifi c Press, 2015). Her work has appeared in Hotel Amerika, The Tishman Review, Pamplemousse, New Mexico Review, Cloudbank, The Literary Review, and in other journals and anthologies. She teaches creative writing for Arcadia University’s low-residency MFA program and lives in Santa Fe.

Michelle Bradway is a Philadelphia based fiction author. She is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh Online while working full-time in fundraising. In addition to writing, Bradway enjoys reading, bike riding, and cuddling with her pup, Little Bear. This is Bradway’s second published work. The first, titled “Clothed,” appeared in the anthology We Will Not be Silenced. Bradway thanks her family and friends for their support.

I still take out and read my high school edition of To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, published by POPULAR LIBRARY in 1968 for 60¢. It’s impossible to say goodbye to this original book that moved me so deeply the first time I read it in high school, and so many times after. I have been transported and transformed by this story and Lee’s writing. It is, truly, one of my best friends.

Sarah Gridley is an associate professor of English at Case Western Reserve University. Her poetry collections include Weather Eye Open; Green is the Orator; and Loom. Her newest collection of poems, Insofar, will be published by New Issues Press in spring 2020. A recipient of the Cecil Hemley Award and the Writer Magazine/Emily Dickinson Award from The Poetry Society of America, she holds a B.A. in English from Harvard University, and an MFA in poetry from the University of Montana. “Vital Materiality” engages The Mayor of Casterbridge. I love Thomas Hardy’s books. He measures the reparative against the devastating.

Judith Hannan is the author of The Write Prescription: Telling Your Story to Live with and Beyond Illness and the memoir Motherhood Exaggerated. Her essays have appeared in The Washington Post, AARP: The Girlfriend, Narratively, Opera News, among other publications. She leads workshops for those affected by physical and/or mental illness, the homeless, and those within the criminal justice system. She is a writing mentor and interventionist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and received a 2015 Arnold P. Gold Foundation Humanism-in-Medicine award. She serves on the Board of the Children’s Museum of Manhattan where she is also Writer-in-Residence.

Andrea Hansell studied Creative Writing at Princeton University. She completed her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and practiced as a psychotherapist in Michigan for many years. She is currently living and writing in Rockville, Maryland. Her essays and short stories have appeared in a variety of publications including Lilith, The Lascaux Review, Intima, and DaCunha Global. She is also a script writer for Glowmedia, a nonprofit group which creates films for mental health education.

A deep love of books led me to my career as a literature teacher, since it seemed the only job I could do with sustained passion and a sense of purpose. Of course, I quickly discovered that most high school students don’t enjoy reading nearly as much as I do, especially not the “classics” we force them to read. Still, the way good stories always spark thinking and empathy in my students confirms my belief that they are essential in education. As President Obama once said, “Novels teach us how to be human beings.”

Debra Kaufman is the author of Delicate Thefts, The Next Moment, and A Certain Light, as well as three chapbooks and many plays. A co-recipient of a Regional North Carolina Artist Grant, she has led writing workshops on the subject of violence against women. She is producing Illuminated Dresses, a series of monologues by women, in fall, 2019. A Midwest native, lives in North Carolina and serves as an editor for the online journal One. Debrakaufman.info

Isla McKetta is the author of Polska, 1994 (Éditions Checkpointed) and co-author of Clear Out the Static in Your Attic: A Writer’s Guide for Turning Artifacts into Art (Write Bloody). She earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Goddard College in Port Townsend, Washington. Isla makes her home in Seattle where she writes fiction, poetry, and book reviews. Find her on Twitter at @islaisreading and on the web at www. islamcketta.com. Recent poems can be found at Cascadia Rising, {isacoustic*}, Riddled with Arrows, and antiBODY.

Books — all sizes, shapes, materials…. I’ve always loved turning the pages, Reading the text, looking at illustrations; the scent of books old and new; bookstores and libraries where one could get lost for days…. Even in the case of upsetting stories like, for me, Pinocchio. As you’ll see.

Dayna Patterson was raised in a bookstore. Her father, the manager, often brought his kids to work for cheap labor. She wrapped books at Christmas time, helped take inventory, and buffed scuff marks from the wooden shelves. Her dad taught her how to doctor broken books, cover paperbacks with contact paper, laminate dust covers to preserve them. Whenever she asked her dad for advice, he would give it, along with a book. She remembers gathering as a family to listen to her dad read, rapt by his baritone voice. She was raised with books as constant companions, and really, she can’t complain. daynapatterson.com

Sylvia Plath’s work has both touched and haunted me for over 20 years. Rereading The Bell Jar and Ariel help remind of who I was and who I am, as well as offering new views of Plath’s powerful presence as a female writer. I write poetry and prose hoping to leave a footprint, and she is one of my inspirations.

 “A Life Beyond School, or how Mine was Saved by a Bibliography of Women’s Literature” is an homage to the books that made me who I am as a woman and a writer. It describes a wrong turn, a change in direction, and the ways I struggled to find my voice after leaving school. If pilgrimages of witness to the soul are possible (and I believe that is what we must do every day in our work as writers), then this essay describes the process (and the books) that helped me find my way. I would not be who I am without them. My books include The Blue Dress: Poems and Prose Poems, Persephone in America, and The Persistence of Rivers: An Essay on Moving Water. I am Emerita Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, and live in the farm country outside Madison.