Read the beginning of Coda: A Novel by René Belletto, translated by Alyson Waters:
"It is to me that we owe our immortality, and this is the story that proves it beyond all doubt.
On Monday, the first of August in the year _ _ _ _ at 9:30 a.m., Anna and I arrived in front of the Parc Monceau in Paris. I was bringing my daughter to the house of her maternal grandparents, Maurice and Maureen Michelangeli.
New this month from University of Nebraska Press is Beyond DiMaggio: Italian Americans in Baseball by Larry Baldassaro. It is a social history of baseball, tracing the evolution of American perceptions toward those big players of Italian decent like DiMaggio, Giamatti and Piazza. It chronicles the baseball exploits that influenced those perceptions. Baldassaro conducted more than fifty interviews with players, coaches, managers, and executives—some with careers dating back to the thirties—in order to put all these figures and their stories into the historical context of baseball, Italian Americans, and, finally, the culture of American sports. Baldassaro was invited by Cubs … Continue reading Author on Chicago radio
This month Another Burning Kingdom by Robert Vivian is featured on the Ninth Letter homepage with an excerpt from the book. Philip Graham writes “Vivian's prose travels strange territory, mixing colloquial speech with the heightened language of spiritual insight, a music fusing dissonance and consonance like matches trying to spark a reader alert.” Click here to take a look. Lisa Harper, author of A Double Life: Discovering Motherhood was a guest blogger on Motherhood Later, Rather than Sooner last week. On the blog, Harper discusses her experience of becoming a mother at 36. Read her blog post here. … Continue reading Roundup news
Author A. B. Guthrie Jr. (1901–91) was a historian and novelist whose 1949 book The Way West won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. He was also a fantastic storyteller who could write a great murder mystery. The University of Nebraska Press has recently begun re-releasing his murder mysteries, all of which feature small-town Montana sheriff Chick Charleston and his highly educated sidekick, Jason Beard, in paperback editions. The most recent of those, Playing Catch-Up was recently reviewed in the Washington Post by Dennis Drabelle who said “for anyone who doesn't know Guthrie's work, Playing Catch-Up is a fine place to … Continue reading Murder mystery review
Read the beginning of "The American People" from First Laugh: Essays, 2000-2009 by Margaret Randall:
"The congressman stands on the Senate steps. He adjusts this season’s fashionable pink tie and the little electronic receiver continually threatening to slip from his ear, and faces the camera head-on. Which has him facing us. The reporter makes short shrift of the usual pleasantries: “Thank you, Congressman, for being willing to talk to us tonight.” The congressman smiles and says it’s his pleasure. I know what’s coming next. Whatever the issue, whatever the question about it, and regardless of whether the spokesperson is a Democrat, a Republican, or an Independent, within the next thirty seconds he or she will use the catch-all phrase, “The American People.” I can bet my future on it.
Continue reading “Off the Shelf: First Laugh by Margaret Randall”
Cover Me: A Health Insurance Memoir is Sonya Huber’s story about her experiences with health care in the United States. From college graduation through hear early 30s, Huber struggles to find a job she enjoys that provides insurance covering routine care — dental checkups and fillings, doctor's visit's, and, eventually, labor and delivery and health care for an infant. She becomes a healthcare activist and, at times, works for non-profits dedicated to improving health care for the middle class and poor, while, ironically, going without insurance herself. Huber’s irreverent and affecting memoir of navigating the nation’s health-care system brings a … Continue reading Sonya Huber interview
Wally Yonamine was both the first Japanese American to play for an NFL franchise and the first American to play professional baseball in Japan after World War II. He is also the subject of Robert Fitt’s biography Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball, which is the unlikely story of how a shy young man from the sugar plantations of Maui overcame prejudice to integrate two professional sports in two countries. The two-sport star died Monday at the age of 85. The San Francisco Chronicle said he “was known as the ‘Nisei Jackie Robinson’ for breaking into Japanese baseball … Continue reading Celebrating Wally Yonamine
Lisa Harper's memoir A Double Life: Discovering Motherhood is more than just her story of becoming a mother. It tells all from conception to her daughter's first word. Kirkus called it "A sweet, immediate articulation of the experience of pregnancy, birth and early motherhood." A Double Life was featured on Largehearted Boy's book note series, in which authors create playlists to accompany their books. Check out Harper’s playlist — as well as her reasons for selecting the songs she did — here. Harper also was on Glimmer Train, writing about finding a balance between parenting and writing. She discusses how … Continue reading A Double Life trailer and then some
Nebraska Native Robert Vivian signs copies of his newest book, Another Burning Kingdom, at the UNL Bookstore on March 2. Another Burning Kingdom is the final volume in Vivian's Tall Grass Trilogy, which includes The Mover of Bones and Lamb Bright Saviors. Continue reading Author returns to Nebraska for Book Signing
Read the beginning of "Expecting" from A Double Life: Discovering Motherhood by Lisa Catherine Harper:
"The story of motherhood doesn’t really begin, at least not always, with the fact of conception. Ask anyone who has found her life transformed by a baby and she will tell you about the time before—the moment, days, weeks, months, or even years—when she waited. Sometimes, of course, as in my mother’s case, a pregnancy takes you by surprise so that one day you find yourself suddenly, unexpectedly pregnant. But for very many others, there is first the decision—the Yes! Sure! Why not? Let’s have a baby!—and then the inevitable wait. Some couples make this decision easily; children are what they’ve always wanted. Others make the choice only after long reflection and deliberation. Our friends, for instance, came to it after nearly ten years of marriage. But once that decision is made, there’s a gap. Some will tell you they got pregnant immediately. Others will tell you long stories about agonizing years of infertility treatments. Every story is different, but the waiting is not. All parents experience that interregnum, a time between two rulers, a time when the solo life seems less sovereign but the dictatorship of the child is not yet an established fact. For many women, it can be a chaotic, unsettling time: we’re not pregnant, which is the one thing we long to be. It makes a lot of us irrational—crazed with the desire for the thing that seems obtainable but which remains always out of reach—until that shock of a day when it isn’t. This time of waiting is a pause, a hiccup, a disjunction in your life when you’re trying to get ready, and you think you are ready, but there’s nothing yet to be ready for.
Continue reading “Off the Shelf: A Double Life by Lisa Catherine Harper”
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