Items related to Southern Lights: PEN American Center/South Literary...
This handsome perfect bound volume, with glossy, vibrantly colored cover photography by Skye Kathleen Moody houses a unique collection of work-poetry, essays, short fiction-by Southern PEN American Center writers. Embodying the spirit of the South as well as the international flavor of PEN, Southern Lights will please readers of all ages and regions.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
From the Publisher:
PEN American Center, a non-profit incorporation, is an affiliate of International PEN: an association of writers-poets, playwrights, essayists, editors, novelists-with centers in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas. Founded in 1921 in London, PEN promotes collegiality among its members and freedom of expression throughout the world. A new independent press, Manya DeLeon Booksmith is delighted to have had the opportunity to publish Southern Lights-a lovely book printed on heavy acid-free paper, it is well suited for gift giving and repeated reading.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
When William Faulkner wrote Soldiers' Pay in a New Orleans townhouse in Pirate's Alley overlooking St. Louis Cathedral's gardens, he never suspected that, decades later, his Muse would haunt the South, striking writer after writer with her inspirational lightning rod.
The Southern United States hangs heavy with Muses. They fall from a sultry sky like ponderous lavender wisteria, vines clutching our senses; their inspirational songs, perfume and poison, set our creative genes to swooning.
Muses ride the Southwestern desert, diligent as Texas Rangers chasing us. From armadilloland into the cha-cha marimba rhythms over San Antonio, the South's Muses swell and strain like Debussy sirens, striking the unwary writer whose words ache for mustang power.
Thrashing through Louisiana swamps, fiercer than summer locusts, slicker than a nutria's coat, they prowl us. When we least suspect, they hit with a force even hurricane shutters can't keep out. Wordspill bloodies our mind's page; poems and novels are conceived, gestated and some, nurtured to life. Fickle, passionate partners, our Muses won't be ignored.
Southern Muses flow up across and Ozark's spine; chilling and raw-boned, they drive down upon Georgia's Blue Ridge Mountains, then amble blithely into pulsing Atlanta. Through Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, they kick up blood red rusted soil and, out of this and hot, soft summer rains, fashion the most eccentric and poignant storytellers: Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor, and newer voices like June Akers Seese and Robert Phillips, Lisa Kahn, Ernest Gaines and Robert Olen Butler.
In Key West, Hemingway's Muse rocks a restless novelist's boat until it capsizes. Along the Gulf Coast, Faulkner's spirit shouts at the horizon and the Muse echoes back into piney woods where Walker Evans' inspiration haunts naysayers of compassionate literature. They never rest, these Southern Muses, but constantly spin their word tornadoes, chasing a Floridian essayist down long white deserted beaches, and in New Orleans, resurrecting Neo-Gothic vampires and worshipping dunces.
In a cowboy's boot, on the alligator's snout, in the velvet glove and Panama hat, the New South harbors more exotic mystery and drama than a Carnival torchlight parade before a Quadroon ball. And herein lies a key to a Southern Muse's vitality: who isn't, after all, a Quadroon at a masked ball? Such rich complex mystery blesses and plagues a region where often the air hangs too heavy to think straight, so you just write what's landed on your soul and pray it makes sense.
Welcome to America's PEN South Literary Review. Southern Lights is a vehicle expressing a rich everflowing vein of PEN talent... This premier issue is dedicated to the Muse in all of us. (Skye Kathleen Moody, Preface, Southern Lights; Manya DeLeon Booksmith, 1995; all rights reserved.)
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherManya Deleon Booksmith
- Publication date1995
- ISBN 10 0963806114
- ISBN 13 9780963806116
- BindingPaperback
- Edition number1
- Number of pages115
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