Archives de catégorie : Narrative Nonfiction

THE WINTER ROAD de Kate Holden

On a country road in Croppa Creek, farmer Ian Turnbull faced environmental officer Glen Turner. What happened next shocked Australia. An epic true story of greed, power and a desire for legacy from an acclaimed Australian storyteller.

THE WINTER ROAD:
A Story of Legacy, Land and a Killing at Croppa Creek
by Kate Holden
Black Inc. (Australia), May 2021

July 2014, a lonely road at twilight outside Croppa Creek, New South Wales: 80-year-old farmer Ian Turnbull takes out a .22 and shoots environmental officer Glen Turner in the back. On one side, a farmer hoping to secure his family’s wealth on the richest agricultural soil in the country. On the other, his obsession: the government man trying to apply environmental laws. The brutal killing of Glen Turner splits open the story of our place on this land. Is our time on this soil a tale of tragedy or triumph – are we reaping what we’ve sown? Do we owe protection to the land, or does it owe us a living? And what happens when, in pursuit of a legacy, a man creates terrible consequences? Kate Holden brings her discerning eye to a gripping tale of law, land and inheritance. It is the story of Australia.

Kate Holden is the author of two acclaimed memoirs, In My Skin and The Romantic, and a regular contributor to The Saturday Paper, The Monthly and The Age.

BEHOLD THE TRIUMPH OF VIRTUE de Jennifer Ashley Wright

BEHOLD THE TRIUMPH OF VIRTUE is a little bit You Never Forget Your First, a little bit The Knick, a dash of The Age of Innocence, and a sprinkle of The Shawshank Redemption.

BEHOLD THE TRIUMPH OF VIRTUE
by Jennifer Ashley Wright
Hachette Books, Spring 2023

This sharp, witty Gilded Age medical history stars Madame Restell, a glamorous women’s healthcare provider in Manhattan, who was a celebrity in her era and a Moira Rose-esque figure with a flair for high fashion and petty public beefs. The story of Restell’s struggle to care for New York’s unmarried women—providing abortions, birth control, and other assistance—in defiance of increasing persecution from powerful men, it ends not in outright tragedy, but with a glorious, life-affirming, bittersweet twist. That this book doubles as a history of women’s health—and the propaganda on which the “pro-life” movement was founded—makes it not just entertaining, but profoundly comforting for feminist readers. Few and far between are the books expanding our sense of hope, humor, and what’s possible for women’s rights in this politicized arena, one which augurs some real downer developments in the coming years. BEHOLD THE TRIUMPH OF VIRTUE does just that, and it does so in a sumptuous, character-driven, frequently funny package.

Jennifer Ashley Wright has written beloved pop history collections from It Ended Badly and Get Well Soon (Holt) to the forthcoming She Kills Me, an illustrated field guide to righteous women who have committed murder (Abrams Image). BEHOLD THE TRIUMPH OF VIRTUE is Wright’s first work of single narrative history.

THE CRANE WIFE And Other Love Stories From Life, de C.J. Hauser

Over a million readers flocked to read CJ Hauser’s essay The Crane Wife when it ran in the Paris Review last year. In her first book-length work of non-fiction, Hauser uses that now-beloved title essay as a thematic anchor around which to explore, through an excavation of both her own personal and larger familial hope chest of ‘love stories,’ what it looks like when a person realizes the traditional narrative she thought was to be the story of her life turns out to be a story which must be rewritten.

THE CRANE WIFE And Other Love Stories From Life
by C.J. Hauser
Doubleday, July 2022
(via DeFiore and Co.)

Ten days after calling off her wedding, CJ Hauser went on an expedition to study the whooping crane. After a week wading through the gulf, she realized she’d almost signed up to live someone else’s life.
In this intimate, frank, and funny memoir-in-essays, Hauser releases herself from traditional narratives of happiness and goes looking for ways of living that leave room for the unexpected, making plenty of mistakes along the way. She kisses internet strangers and officiates a wedding. She re-reads Rebecca in the house her boyfriend once shared with his ex-wife and re-winds Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story to learn how not to lose yourself in a relationship. She thinks about Florence Nightingale at a robot convention and grief at John Belushi’s rock and roll gravesite, and the difference between those stories we’re asked to hold versus those we choose to carry. She writes about friends and lovers, blood family and chosen family, and asks what more expansive definitions of love might offer us all.
Told with the late-night barstool directness of your wisest, most big-hearted friend, THE CRANE WIFE is a book for everyone whose life doesn’t look the way they thought it would; for everyone learning to find joy in the not-knowing; for everyone trying, if sometimes failing, to build a new sort of life story, a new sort of family, a new sort of home, to live in.

Feature film rights to “The Crane Wife” essay have been sold to an award-winning producer, and streamer, with an Oscarwinning actress attached to star and produce.

C.J. Hauser teaches creative writing and literature at Colgate University. She is the author of the novels The From-Aways and Family of Origin, and her fiction has appeared in Tin House, Narrative Magazine, TriQuarterly, Esquire, and The Kenyon Review. She holds an MFA in fiction from Brooklyn College and a PhD in Creative Writing from The Florida State University. She lives in Hamilton, New York.

HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD de Robert Kolker sélectionné par Oprah Winfrey pour son Book Club !

La nouvelle vient d’être annoncée dans l’émission  “CBS This Morning” : la célèbre Oprah Winfrey a sélectionné comme prochain titre pour son Book Club le livre de Robert Kolker sur la schizophrénie, HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD :

HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD paraît aujourd’hui chez Doubleday aux Etats-Unis et figure déjà dans les sélections du mois d’avril de Goodreads (« April’s Most Anticipated New Books« ) et d’Apple (« Apple Best Book of April »).

“HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD vividly conveys not only the inner experience of schizophrenia but its effects on the families whose members are afflicted . . . With the skill of a great novelist, Mr. Kolker brings every member of the family to life.” —Richard J. McNally, Wall Street Journal 

Les droits de langue française sont toujours disponibles.

THE UNMAKING de Stephanie Foo

In this science-based, remarkably candid account of what it’s like to heal from Complex PTSD, journalist Stephanie Foo offers a fascinating exploration of a psychological phenomenon we’re only beginning to understand and a relevant and powerful narrative of reckoning and healing.

THE UNMAKING
by Stephanie Foo
Ballantine, pub. date TBD

Stephanie Foo was an accomplished journalist, a producer at This American Life, won an Emmy, and launched a podcasting app, but behind her office door she was having panic attacks. At the age of 30 she was diagnosed with Complex PTSD. Finding few resources to help her heal, Stephanie set out to write her own guide, THE UNMAKING. With the determination and curiosity of an award-winning journalist, Stephanie investigates the science behind Complex PTSD and how it has shaped her own life. She interviews experts and tries a variety of therapies. She also dives into her past of extreme child abuse and neglect and uncovers family secrets.
While someone can develop PTSD from a single traumatic event, Complex PTSD blooms when the trauma happens over and over and over, over the course of years. Risk factors include being hit or verbally abused by a caretaker, having mentally ill, alcoholic or addict parents, or even facing poverty. Those numbers alone add up to around 50 million people. And that’s not including the large populations of those who may have developed Complex PTSD through domestic abuse, continual health issues, or POC and queer people living in threatening and discriminatory environments. They need help. And yet…nobody is talking about it. THE UNMAKING describes how C-PTSD is, essentially, brain damage, and the tragic impact it has on bodies and minds. But unlike the academic books on C-PTSD, Stephanie Foo also shares how it feels to learn that science as a survivor. She writes about her doubts, anguish, terrible setbacks, and ultimately, successes.

Stephanie Foo is a writer and radio producer. She most recently was a producer at the radio show This American Life, which reaches 5 million listeners every week. Before that, she helped create the public radio show Snap Judgment, where she produced nearly 200 stories in 4 years. Foo is an acclaimed advocate for diversity in all forms. She wrote a viral article for Transom about the importance of diverse workplaces, particularly in newsrooms, and speaks frequently on the topic of diversity and inclusion. She’s an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University and has spoken at Columbia, Vassar, Yale, Berkeley and CUNY.