Short review: Shirley Jackson biography

I just finished Ruth Franklin's marvelous biography Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, which would make a great gift for writer-mamas.

Best known for her short story "The Lottery," Jackson wrote six novels--one of which was nominated for a National Book Award and another made into a movie--five story collections, four children's books, and two hugely popular comic memoirs about her family. She managed all of that while raising four children in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s with little support from her husband--in fact, her writing income supported the family for many years. (Her advice? Do less housework.)

Franklin engagingly weaves aspects of Jackson's personal life with summaries of her work and its critical reception. I particularly enjoyed the head-scratching from critics who didn't understand how the same writer could publish funny stories about her kids and literary fiction that explores the human capacity for evil.

Fascinating and inspiring, Franklin's book ought to reinvigorate interest in Jackson's work; her titles are on my wish list! (I'm already obsessed with We Have Always Lived in the Castle... just look at that cover!)

Books, books, books

Checked out a stack of recent goodies from the library...

Looking forward to settling in with a cup of tea and Mom's crocheted afghan! (I'll let you know which ones keep me up all night...)

Birth Writes cover reveal

Hollering from the rooftops:

My Katrina birth experience essay is in here, along with birth stories from a bunch of talented writers. It's going to be great!

The anthology is being finalized, and last I heard it would be ready to buy sometime in December...I will DEFINITELY let you know!

Welcome back, brain

After a long, hot summer of Camp Mom (two kids + one 40 pound puppy over three months of sweltering heat and almost-daily thunderstorms), I am so grateful for September. Kids are back in school (even my 2.5 year old!), weather is beginning to cool off, and I finally have time and energy to tackle some of the projects buzzing around in my sun-soaked brain. And none of them involve fingerpaints or glitter. Yet.

I'm working on a review for Women's Review of Books of an interesting book by a native New Orleanian, Hearing Sappho in New Orleans by Ruth Salvaggio. The premise is that the author, while mucking out her flooded home after Katrina, found a copy of Sappho's poems, and she begins thinking about how Sappho has been dug out of the muck for 2,000 years--just won't stay buried. She argues that New Orleans is much the same way; its culture goes back too far and too deep to be completely lost. It's a scholarly quest for the origins of New Orleans lyric poetry, and a very interesting ride.

The difficult parts, for me, are reliving some of the immediate aftermath of Katrina, remembering details of that time. And of course, reading and writing about lost homes and lives immediately after Hurricane Isaac did the same thing for so many families around Louisiana--it feels like the trouble never really stops. Yet that's Salvaggio's point, over 300 years, times of trouble and sorrow, there are threads that connect the past to present, and how comforting that is, to know that someone has done this before and wrote something down for someone else to find. Now it's my turn.

Happy National Poetry Month!

Check out a mini-roundup I wrote for National Poetry Month on Literary Mama. I love to read and review books of poetry, and I hope to write more about the two books mentioned here: Beth Ann Fennelly's Unmentionables and Marie Howe's The Kingdom of Ordinary Time. For now, this is just a taste!