Advice on writing memoirs

Tracy Seeley, author of the forthcoming My Ruby Slippers, wrote a guest post on the Writer’s Digest blog. In the post, she discusses three privacy issues that come up when a writer decides to tell her personal story. To read all of her advice, check out the blog. My Ruby Slippers is Seeley’s memoir of her personal search for home. In her childhood, her father’s dreams kept them moving constantly. By the time she was nine, she had lived in seven towns and thirteen different houses. My Ruby Slippers describes Seeley's search for the true meaning of home.  Lewis Buzbee, … Continue reading Advice on writing memoirs

Holiday News

Welcome back! While we were out on break, quite a lot happened. Here’s a quick round up of the news that you may have missed over the holidays:   In Scoreboard, Baby, Ken Armstrong and Nick Perry undercover the true and shocking story about the University of Washington’s 2000 football season and what some players got away with off the field. Krystina Lucido from PressBox reviewed Scoreboard, Baby saying that it  “is not only a closer look into a system that has failed victims who have suffered at the hands of star athletes, but is a call to the court … Continue reading Holiday News

Off the Shelf: My Ruby Slippers by Tracy Seeley

Seeley Read the beginning of Chapter 2, "The Good Land" from My Ruby Slippers: The Road Back to Kansas by Tracy Seeley:

"I shiver in the backseat in the corner against the door. I hold my cheek against the cold metal until it hurts. I hold myself very still. I am five, and we are moving away. My father drives. My mother sits next to him and says nothing. I will not look at them. Instead, I stare out the window and hear the car tires slub, slub, slub on the
red brick streets. My chest hurts. The narrow dark windows of my school slide by—window, window, window, window. I can’t see in. But I know that Mrs. Little’s kindergarten is going on without me. The children are using quiet voices, cutting paper and coloring, reading and writing in the big yellow workbooks with smooth, dry pages and an elephant on the front. They are listening to stories and taking a quiet nap on cool mats with the lights turned out. I had waited a whole year for school, while my older sister fell in love with Mrs. Little and sat in a circle on the braided rug and came home singing new songs. All of that has been mine for less than half a year. I can hardly breathe. My throat aches. I do not speak or cry. We turn a corner and the brick streets end. We are moving away.

Continue reading “Off the Shelf: My Ruby Slippers by Tracy Seeley”

Off the Shelf: Beyond DiMaggio: Italian Americans in Baseball by Lawrence Baldassaro

Baldassaro Read the beginning of Chapter 1, "Ed Abbaticchio: Forgotten Pioneer" from Beyond DiMaggio: Italian Americans in Baseball by Lawrence Baldassaro, Foreword by Dom DiMaggio:

"In one of the first stories on Joe DiMaggio to appear in a national publication, Quentin Reynolds, associate editor of Collier’s magazine, recounted the following exchange among baseball writers covering spring training in 1936: “‘He says you pronounce it Dee-Mah-gee-o,’ one of the sports writers said gloomily. ‘That’s a very tough name to pronounce and also tough to spell,’ another added. ‘DiMaggio sounds like something you put on a steak,’ one writer said in disgust.”1

Continue reading “Off the Shelf: Beyond DiMaggio: Italian Americans in Baseball by Lawrence Baldassaro”

Off the Shelf: Christine by Laura Curtis Bullard

Bullard Read the beginning of the Introduction from Christine: Or Woman's Trials and Triumphs by Laura Curtis Bullard, edited and with an introduction by Denise M. Kohn:

"When Laura Curtis Bullard wrote Christine: Or Woman’s Trials and Triumphs she created one of antebellum America’s most radical heroines: a woman’s rights leader. Through the creation of her unconventional title character, Curtis Bullard gave voice to her own support for female suffrage, careers, and economic independence, which was termed the “woman’s rights” movement in the mid-nineteenth century and was considered scandalous, even sinful, by many Americans.1 Curtis Bullard was twenty-five when Christine, her second novel, was published in 1856, and she was the editor of a newspaper for women, the Ladies’ Visitor. She continued her career after she was married and became a mother, and in 1870 she succeeded Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony as editor of the suffrage newspaper the Revolution, publishing essays about the social problems caused by women’s inequality that she had earlier dramatized in Christine.

Continue reading “Off the Shelf: Christine by Laura Curtis Bullard”

UNP author in the New York Times

 The Wide Open reveals how some of the most interesting and accomplished writers and photographers in the country have met that challenge and given the genius of the prairie a vision and a voice. It contains poetry, prose and photographs of the prairie. ForeWord Magazine called it "A superb evocation of the prairie and its life." One of the contributing authors, Annick Smith, was featured in an article in the New York Times on Sunday, December 12. Smith and other writers are coming together with their love for the wild western prairies of Montana to try to stop Imperial Oil … Continue reading UNP author in the New York Times

Off the Shelf: Local Wonders by Ted Kooser

Kooser Read an excerpt from the 2011 One Book One Nebraska selection, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps by Ted Kooser:

"In the weeks just before Christmas, my father’s store was busiest, its narrow aisles crowded with shoppers, its carefully arranged displays rumpled and disarrayed, and its floors slippery with melting snow. On Saturdays and when school let out in the afternoons, my sister and I helped out. She worked on the sales floor, and I made bows for the women in the gift-wrap booth.

Continue reading “Off the Shelf: Local Wonders by Ted Kooser”

Local bookstore in Shelf Awareness

Yesterday, Indigo Bridge Books, one of Lincoln’s own local sellers, was featured on Shelf Awareness. Indigo Bridge Books opened in 2008, and won immediate popularity with its  children’s bilingual story time. Today, it has added more events — kid and adult friendly alike. Indigo has events like indiZoo where an animal is brought in for kids to see, and from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. it offers a “priceless menu,” which usually includes baguettes and soups at a community table that spark conversation between the people who are there. It's also a good place to find University of Nebraska Press … Continue reading Local bookstore in Shelf Awareness

1921 on air online

1921: The Yankees, the Giants, and the Battle for Baseball Supremacy in New York by Lyle Spatz and Steve Steinberg tells the story of the New York baseball at the dawn of the roaring twenties and the first all–New York Series that resulted in the first American League pennant for the now-storied Yankees’ franchise.  Last Sunday, Steve Steinberg talked about 1921 on the blog talk radio show New York Baseball Digest, hosted by Mike Silva. Listen to their discussion at the blog site. Steinberg doesn't come on until about six minutes into the recording. Continue reading 1921 on air online