The Bone Spindle (Conversation Pieces)

Anne Sheldon’s heroines have lowered eyes and seditious smiles. They are people of folklore and fairy tales: Penelope, the Crane Maiden, the Fates. Her heroes are outsiders in their own stories—Rumpelstiltskin and Arachne’s father. These story-poems and stories focus on the work that women do with spinning wheel, spindle, and knitting needles. They are accompanied by evocative images of these instruments and the cloth they yield.

Review

”Anne Sheldon's The Bone Spindle collects fourteen short pieces, mostly poetry, on the subject of women and the cloth-making arts…. Each piece responds to a story—usually a fairy tale, though Sheldon also engages with Dickens, a history of textiles, and an overheard story from the University of Chicago. The result is a book whose form expresses its content: it feels woven, with various story-threads combined into whole cloth. Through her focus on the art of weaving, Sheldon comments on the intricate art of storytelling…. The Bone Spindle includes images as well as words: the illustrations are based on photographs of looms, spinning wheels, yarn and hands busy with knitting or embroidery. They complement the written words and add another thread to Sheldon's tapestry of old, new and reinterpreted stories. This collection would make a beautiful gift for a knitter or weaver, but it's also a storyteller's book, so full of voices that it seems to beg to be read aloud.”

Sofia Samatar, Strange Horizons

Formerly a children's librarian, Anne Sheldon teaches storytelling at the University of Maryland. Her poems have appeared in mainstream literary journals as well as in speculative venues such as Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Paradox, and Lyric. Her first book of poetry, Hero-surfing, was published in 2002 by Washington Writers Publishing House. Her second book, Adventures of the Faithful Counselor, appeared in 2006. She has performed widely as a storyteller in the mid-Atlantic region.