Donna M. Campbell
University of Georgia Press: 2016
In 1921, Edith Wharton became the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in fiction for her novel, The Age of Innocence. Wharton was part of a new generation born in the 1860s and 1870s who, equipped with new biological theories, challenged conventions of the Victorian era.
Deriving its title from one of Wharton’s remarks … » More …
Alex Kuo’s writing confronts censorship both explicit and hidden
In a pivotal moment from Alex Kuo’s new novel shanghai.shanghai.shanghai, several Chinese card players watch a team of Americans publicly disavow George W. Bush’s administration in front of an international audience. Struck by the brazen criticism, a pickpocket known as Bogota Man questions how such anti-government opinions could ever be voiced openly.
He contends that political dissent in China can mean life in solitary confinement. A friend quickly responds that in America the defiant act of protest is more likely to be completely ignored.
“I’m not sure which is worse,” she says.
Linda Russo
Shearsman Books: 2015
Linda Russo translates the environmental characteristics of the Palouse from scenery to words in this slender volume of her poetry. The cohabitation between humans and nature is explored everywhere from a home garden to the vast wheat fields. Her other poems delve into post-pastoral themes of consumer development on farmable land:
shopping centers and cheap food production
the song of arable, or … » More …
England came late to the Renaissance. But by the time it arrived, its greatest contribution would be literary. John Donne, William Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson served a literate aristocracy eager to be informed and entertained.
Into the late sixteenth century comes the observant figure of Michel de Montaigne, a French statesman and prolific essayist who wrote about nearly everything his mind encountered, “from cannibals to codpieces, suicide to faith,” as Will Hamlin, WSU’s English literature and Renaissance scholar, puts it. For most English readers of the time, Montaigne’s French Essais were made accessible by a translation undertaken by his contemporary John Florio, a language teacher … » More …
Washington’s Poet Laureate brings poetry to, and discovers it in, each of the state’s 39 counties
Although my parents lived in the same house in Richland, Washington—my hometown—for 50 years, they never stopped being proud, relentless Oregonians. But in 1989 Mother and Dad celebrated Washington’s centenary in a big way. They dreamed up one of those projects that makes sense to retired couples but bemuses their children: visiting and photographing all 39 Washington county courthouses. They were even written up in the Tri-City Herald for achieving their goal, and photographed paging through their album. A family friend rediscovered the newspaper clipping more than twenty years … » More …
A small collection of lively illustrations Nate Taylor has created for his friend and WSU Classmate, fantasy writer Patrick Rothfuss ’02 MA as well as some of Taylor’s other work.
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The famous Star Trek tribbles owe a lot to previous science fiction works, as does Princess Leia.
» More ...As a graduate student at Washington State University in the late 1960s, Noël Riley Fitch found her calling in an issue of Ladies’ Home Journal. A two-page story about Sylvia Beach and her little bookshop called Shakespeare and Company in Paris in the 1920s sparked her interest.
Her professor, John Elwood, encouraged her to pursue Beach as a subject for her master’s thesis. Elwood had long had a love for French café society. When he was in the armed services in World War II, he met writer and critic Gertrude Stein in Paris. He loved that period of literary history, says Riley Fitch.
She … » More …
