While Dragging Our Hearts Behind Us: The Photographs
by Boni Thompson, author of While Dragging Our Hearts Behind Us. St. Patrick’s Day is a fitting day to reflect on the publication of my grandfather’s story, 101 years after the end of the Irish Civil War, and therefore 101 years since my grandfather James left Ireland behind him. Evading the inevitable round-up of irregulars,…
Q & A with John Fulton
JR: How did your first forays into writing compare to the work you publish now? JF: It depends on what you mean by my “first forays,” which were way back in my college/university days. I was experimenting then, playing around with language, seeing what I could do, what sort of voices and linguistic acrobatics I…
Toxic Positivity Afloat: a Modern-Day retelling of Hemingway’s The Old Man and The Sea
Toxic positivity is running amok, and not even Hemingway’s Santiago can reel it in. Then again, reeling it in would be the antithesis to Santiago’s indestructible pride just as it would be to a large percentage of humanity whose hold is as relentless as the old man’s. Some would label it a conundrum; others, a…
A Q&A with Patrick Colm Hogan
JR: A People Without Shame is a strange book, full of contrasting parts. At times diary, at times legend, at times transcript, at times article, it seems as though the novel is trying to demonstrate how difficult it is to convey its subject matter in a conventional manner. What do you think of this interpretation?…
Mission to Madagascar: The Sergeant, the King, and the Slave Trade
by David H Mould In 1817, a decade after Britain banned the slave trade to its colonies, a 30-year-old East India Company sergeant with no diplomatic training embarked on a risky mission. James Hastie travelled for almost a month from the coast of Madagascar through the tropical rainforest to the central highlands. His mission—to persuade…
On Writing
by Cameron Alam Once upon a time, I thought historical fiction was written the way a house is built, brick by brick, word by word, the author using her mortar of craft to adhere words together into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, paragraphs into chapters as the story is formed. When I sat down to write…
Twenty Fingers for One Dollar
By Kate Mueser “So, is it autobiographical?” Those who know me well will ask that question when they read my debut novel, The Girl with Twenty Fingers, about an American used-to-be pianist in Germany who plays Mozart’s works for piano four hands with an elderly German man. “Absolutely not!” I would reply. “But Kate,” they…
Ma Chère Maman—Mon Cher Enfant
by Elizabeth Auld What does French baroque music have to do with letters from World War I? The answer is not obvious but, in this case, one of simple coincidence. Two scholars of the French Baroque from both sides of the Atlantic become friends; finally, their spouses meet. The rest, as far as this book…
On Disrupting a Cherished Musical Tradition and Creating New Appalachian Ballads
August 2022
Tuscawilla: Stories of a Farm has been our best seller this month. We thank Robert Tuckwiller for his idea to sell copies at his booth at the State Fair of West Virginia. There really couldn’t be a more perfect setting for selling this book: the Fair features prominently in Cary’s memoirs, and one must pass…
