Sarah Kennedy
Sarah Kennedy is the author of the novels Self-Portrait, with Ghost and The Altarpiece, City of Ladies, and The King’s Sisters, Books in The Cross and the Crown series, set in Tudor England. She has also published seven books of poems. A professor of English at Mary Baldwin University in Staunton, Virginia, Kennedy holds a PhD in Renaissance Literature and an MFA in Creative Writing. She has received grants from both the NEA, the NEH, and the VA Commission for the Arts. Please visit Sarah at her website: http://sarahkennedybooks.com
Reading List
A Development
Maybe this will stop her, the cardinal who’s flinging herself at the windowpanes: a row of cobalt bottles on each sill. I thought she had lost her mate, lone widow seeing herself—shadow of scarlet—in the glass, or had eaten something …
Swarm
Halo of insane tongues, mortifying mantle, sanguine pearl on a fingertip, God Almighty’s Cow: very unlucky to kill. A children’s verse once told us so— Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home— but that was before they invaded by the thousands (or …
Some Prison Fiction (Pearce, Highsmith, Greer, Bathanti)
Writers of fiction have used prisons as settings for centuries, and prison escapes have long been a feature of Hollywood films. Papillon, The Great Escape, Escape from Alcatraz are just a few, and who hasn’t seen the rather sentimental Shawshank …
SWEET CARESS (Bloomsbury, 2015) by William Boyd
William Boyd’s Sweet Caress (Bloomsbury 2015) is a sweeping novel written in the voice of one English woman, Amory Clay—but in two different time frames. An epic story of one woman’s life, punctuated by her experiences with both World Wars, …
Guests on Earth (Algonquin, 2013) by Lee Smith
Lee Smith’s has long written perceptively about Southern women (Family Linen, Oral History, Saving Grace), and her new novel, Guests on Earth, is no exception. Grounded in the 1948 burning of the Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, the novel …
Bobcat and Other Stories (Algonquin, 2013) by Rebecca Lee
Rebecca Lee’s new short story collection, Bobcat and Other Stories (Algonquin 2013), centers on the lives of young adults, most of whom are in college or newly embarking on marriage and careers. In prose that I often found deft and …
The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling
Having never cracked the cover of a Harry Potter novel, I opened The Casual Vacancy with no preconceived notions about J. K. Rowling’s writing. The book, at just over 500 pages, seemed satisfyingly hefty for leisure reading, and small-town England …