Olivia DrakeLaura Fraser ’82 wrote the May 28 “Modern Love” column for the New York Times. In “Our Way of Saying Goodbye,” Fraser traces the role of the Italian farewell, “ci vediamo,” or, “we’ll see each other” in her long-time, but sporadic, relationship with “The Professor,” her sometimes-married lover. She writes that earlier on, the words served as affirmation that “he would always stitch in and out of my life, and that this stitching was slowly mending my heart.” Ultimately, it again allowed the lovers to avoid “goodbye,” when he is diagnosed with liver cancer. Fraser’s memoir on their meeting, An…
David LowSam Wasson ‘03 has written a new book, Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman (HarperCollins), about the making of the beloved 1961 Hollywood classic directed by Blake Edwards and based on the Truman Capote novella. The book was published June 22. In a recent article about the book in New York magazine, Mary Kaye Schilling writes: “A fascination with fascination is one way of describing Wasson’s interest in a film that not only captures the sedate elegance of a New York long gone, but that continues to entrance as a love…
Many families with a child with autism or Asperger Syndrome feel that involvement in the community is not for them. In Lisa Jo Rudy’s new book, Get Out, Explore, and Have Fun!: How Families of Children With Autism or Asperger Syndrome Can Get the Most Out of Community Activities (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, May 2010), Rudy ’81 offers a rich and varied menu of suggestions for how such families can take full part in community life and support the strengths and interests of their child at the same time. Rudy explains that informal learning experiences can be the key to self-discovery,…
Carolyn Parkhurst ’92 made a huge splash on the literary scene with her first best-selling novel The Dogs of Babel. She has just published her third novel, The Nobodies Album, and it has already received several positive reviews in such publications as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Entertainment Weekly as well as on NPR. The protagonist of the novel is Octavia Frost, a famous best-selling novelist who is also known to be unpleasant. As she is about to deliver her latest manuscript to her New York publisher, she finds out her rock star son Milo has been…
Cynthia RockwellPatrick Maguire ’83, a writer and blogger—and a 30-year veteran of the service industry—was highlighted in the Dec. 9 Boston Globe Magazine in an interview about the message behind his site, www.servernotservant.com. For Globe staffer Jenn Abelson, Maguire outlines the message behind his Boston-based blog, which also serves as a platform to launch his book-in-progress and is gaining some wider media attention. His goal is to increase civility in our day-to-day dealings with each other, in general, and with those who work in service industries, in particular, where people are often treated with little respect. The customer, he says, is…
This year’s Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction, Tinkers by Paul Harding, was a bit of a surprise. The book had gotten excellent reviews (though it wasn’t reviewed by The New York Times) and was pushed by independent book sellers. But it was far from a slam dunk for a prestigious literary prize. Even more surprising is the publisher, Bellevue Literary Press, where Erika Goldman '81 is editorial director. This is the first small publisher to release a Pulitzer fiction winner since Louisiana State University Press published A Confederacy of Dunces. Bellevue Literary Press is part of New York University’s School…
Bill Shapiro '87 has edited an entertaining and often fascinating book, Other People’s Rejection Letters (Clarkson Potter), in which he has collected 150 rejection letters sent to famous and ordinary people and presented exactly as they were written. The letters included are surprisingly varied, sent by text message, e-mail and by the U.S. Postal Service, and messages are handwritten, typed, illustrated and scrawled in lipstick and crayon. Alongside letters rejecting Gertrude Stein, Andy Warhol and Jimi Hendrix, readers can peruse notes from former lovers, relatives, would-be bosses, potential publishers, universities, Walt Disney Productions, the pope and even “the Private Office…
Bill HolderAmy Bloom ’75, a distinguished writer of novels, short stories, nonfiction, and projects for television, has been named the Kim-Frank Family University Writer in Residence at Wesleyan University. Her appointment takes effect July 1. Bloom will enhance Wesleyan’s curricular offerings in writing by offering two courses per year, and she will serve as a senior thesis advisor. She will have an office in the Shapiro Creative Writing Center. “Amy Bloom is one of the most accomplished writers in the United States today,” says President Michael S. Roth. “Her insight, her creativity, and her deep understanding of the craft of writing…
Growing up, Steve Almond ’88 secretly desired to live the life of a rock star but after taking piano lessons he realized he had no musical talent. Though he didn’t become a musician, he became the next best thing: an obsessive music fan, particularly of rock and roll—or what he calls “a drooling fanatic.” Almond’s new book, Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life (Random House), recounts his love for music from his earliest rock criticism to his devotion to obscure bands to his meeting with Erin, a former heavy-metal “chick” who became his wife. As he has shown in…
Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter (University of Chicago Press) by Seth Lerer ’76 has been honored with the 2010 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin. The $30,000 award, the largest annual cash prize in English-language literary criticism, is administered for the Capote Estate by the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Lerer, dean of arts and humanities at the University of California San Diego, where he is distinguished professor in the Department of Literature, will receive the award in a free, public event at 4 p.m. Thursday, May 6, in the Senate Chamber…
Habeas corpus has been known as the Great Writ of Liberty but history shows us that it is actually a writ of power. In Habeas Corpus: From England to Empire (Harvard University Press), Paul D. Halliday ’83, a history professor at the University of Virginia, provides a sweeping revisionist account of the world’s most revered legal device and changes the traditional way people understand the writ and democracy. The author examined thousands of cases across more than five hundred years to write this history of the writ from the 15th to the 18th centuries. Beginning in the 1600s, English judges…
Fiction writer and essayist Amy Bloom ’75 was interviewed on March 13, 2010 by Emma Brockes in The Guardian, UK. Bloom’s third collection of short stories, Where the God of Love Hangs Out (Random House), was published in January to general critical acclaim. In the interview, Bloom talks about her previous career as a psychotherapist, growing up with parents employed as writers, writing novels vs. short stories, reviews (she doesn’t read them), writing for television, and her personal life. Bloom was asked why in an era of withering attention spans, short stories aren’t in greater demand. “It’s a question of…