Items related to Telling Time: Angels, Ancestors, and Stories

Telling Time: Angels, Ancestors, and Stories - Softcover

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9781480481732: Telling Time: Angels, Ancestors, and Stories

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Synopsis

In thirteen essays, Willard explores the possibilities created when pen is put to paper. An invaluable book for those who participate in the writing process, as well as those who enjoy the end result. "Willard's perspective on the relationship between writing and personal experience is uniquely enlightening and affirmative" (Robert Pack, Director, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference).

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About the Author

Nancy Willard (born June 26, 1936) is a novelist, a poet, and a children's writer and occasional illustrator. Her 1981 collection of poems, A Visit to William Blake's Inn, won the Newbery Medal as that year's most distinguished contribution to American children's literature.

Willard was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she later received the B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and won five Hopwood Awards for creative writing. She also studied at Stanford University, where she received her M.A.

From Kirkus Reviews

In a luminous collection of essays, prolific children's author, poet, and novelist Willard (Sister Water, 1993) speaks of the magic and craft of writing. Many of these 13 pieces describe the power of poems in their ancient role as incantations that call us to see the objects and beings of the world anew--and of the power of stories as parables. The truth nestles hidden inside a good story, contends Willard, who quotes Eudora Welty: ``Fiction is a lie...Never in its inside thoughts, always in its outside dress.'' One of the most vivid lessons Willard ever got on the importance of giving truth some ``outside dress'' came from a University of Michigan student who briefly rented a room in her parents' rambling house. Willard relates that, according to young Danny Weinstein, Truth used to go around stark-naked, scandalizing everybody until he happened to meet Parable, who dressed him up: ``Truth put on a white linen suit, a pink shirt, and a black tie, and what do you know? People invited him here, they invited him there, they shook his hand when they met him in the street. Since that time Truth and Parable are great friends.'' Inspired by Weinstein's story, Willard weaves a series of delightful parables that dramatize basic writing principles like ``show, don't tell.'' The best stories, says the author, pull the reader into a special, ceremonial time and space in which past and present coexist. A writer must learn to wait actively for such tales, for they always seem to come through chance, as though delivered by angels. These are the stories that preserve the inner truth of beloved ancestors and places, that resonate--even if not explicitly--with the timeless human incantation, ``Once upon a time.'' Willard strings together insight after insight, creating a celebration of, as well as a guide to, the writing life. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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  • PublisherOpen Road Media
  • Publication date2014
  • ISBN 10 1480481734
  • ISBN 13 9781480481732
  • BindingPaperback
  • Number of pages316
  • Rating
    • 4.6 out of 5 stars
      20 ratings by Goodreads

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Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780156931304: Telling Time: Angels, Ancestors, And Stories

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  0156931303 ISBN 13:  9780156931304
Publisher: Mariner Books, 1993
Softcover