Literary Memoir

Tess Chakkalakal gives listeners the first comprehensive biography of Charles W. Chesnutt. A complex and talented man, Chesnutt was born in 1858 in Cleveland to parents who were considered "mixed race." Though light-skinned, Chesnutt remained a member of the black community throughout his life. He studied among students at the State Colored Normal School who were formerly enslaved. He became a teacher in rural North Carolina during Reconstruction. His life in the South of those years, the issue of race, and how he himself identified as Black informed much of his later writing.

Kendra Allen’s first collection of essays—at its core—is a bunch of mad stories about things she never learned to let go of. Unifying personal narrative and cultural commentary, this collection grapples with the lessons that have been stored between parent and daughter. These parental relationships expose the conditioning that subconsciously informed her ideas on social issues such as colorism, feminism, war-induced PTSD, homophobia, marriage, and “the n-word,” among other things.

Che cosa si prova a vivere con la morte come assidua compagna? Per piú di un anno Ilan Fernández, uno dei maggiori narcotrafficanti a livello internazionale, oggi imprenditore di successo, ha raccontato a Giulio Laurenti la sua vita rocambolesca e pericolosa: anzi, le sue due vite. Quelle confessioni sono diventate un romanzo, dalla voce inconfondibile e unica, col timbro della verità definitiva. E la cocaina ci appare sotto una luce che non avevamo mai considerato, frutto come è di uno smercio intriso di morte.

Written seven years before The Town and the City officially launched his writing career, The Sea Is My Brother marks the pivotal point at which Kerouac began laying the foundations for his pioneering method and signature style. The novel chronicles the misadventures of two seamen who at first seem different but are really two sides of the same coin: 27-year-old Wesley Martin, who “loved the sea with a strange, lonely love,” and William Everhart, an assistant professor of English at Columbia College.

While society called his disability an obstacle and limitation, Neil argued that his "flourishing dystonia" allowed him to think, explore, and create art in a way most people cannot. True to his words, Neil embraced every opportunity to experience life to its fullest, from navigating the Alaskan wilderness in a wheelchair to commanding the spotlight on stage. In this deeply personal account, Neil invites listeners into his world as he remembers adventures and escapades, triumphs and disappointments.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, originally published in 1893, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle had decided that these would be the last collection of Holmes's stories, and intended to kill him off in "The Final Problem". Reader demand stimulated him to write another Holmes adventure - The Hound of the Baskervilles. In "The Return of Sherlock Holmes", Holmes relates the aftermath of "The Final Problem", and how he survived. Content: I. The Adventure of Silver Blaze / II.

Darcey Steinke, acclaimed author of Flash Count Diary and Suicide Blonde, explores the world of pain for those who suffer and those who love them. One-fifth of Americans live in chronic pain. In some form—chronic or temporary, corporal or emotional—pain is a state we will all endure. Darcey...

What is it like to work inside a state hospital or to be a patient in such a hospital? What is it like to live inside the mind of such a patient? This tragi-comedic novel takes the listener inside the asylum, inside the worlds of three central characters: a narrator who has taken refuge from his fears of the world, a psychiatrist whose own life has been damaged by his father's depression, and a catatonic schizophrenic whose world is trapped inside a crack in the wall opposite her bed.

The Literary Legacy of Rebecca West is the first book to explore the entire corpus of her extraordinary 71-year writing career. The general introductory studies of West are outdated and do not take into account her posthumous publications, or her large literary archive of unpublished letters and manuscripts. Previous scholarly books have chopped West up into categories and genres instead of following the evolution of her career.

Everyone who knew him told stories about Lawrence, and Lawrence told stories about everyone he knew. He also told stories about himself, again and again: a pioneer of autofiction, no writer before Lawrence had made so permeable the border between life and literature. In Burning Man: The Trials of D. H. Lawrence, acclaimed biographer Frances Wilson tells a new story about the author, focusing on his decade of superhuman writing and travel between 1915, when The Rainbow was suppressed following an obscenity trial, and 1925, when he was diagnosed with tuberculosis.

In the days just before the rise of the Internet, a music scene begins in the small Midwestern city of Terre Haute, Indiana and the local club owner has a fierce vision of the town becoming the next Seattle. But there is a long way to go for these scruffy upstarts. Some obstacles: a big-time music journalist with motivational difficulties, the antics of the musicians, a politician looking to make a name and the club owner's own personal drive.

A tireless champion of the downtrodden, Nelson Algren, one of the most celebrated writers of the 20th century, lived an outsider's life himself. He spent a month in prison as a young man for the theft of a typewriter; his involvement in Marxist groups earned him a lengthy FBI dossier; and he spent much of his life palling around with the sorts of drug addicts, prostitutes, and poor laborers who inspired and populated his novels and short stories. Most today know Algren as the radical writer of The Man with the Golden Arm, but award-winning reporter Mary Wisniewski offers a deeper portrait.

From the best-selling and award-winning author of novels Bone and Steer Toward Rock, Fae Myenne Ng’s Orphan Bachelors is an extraordinary memoir of her beloved San Francisco’s Chinatown and of a family building a life in a country bent on their exclusion.

What do you do if you have a message from God that makes everyone around you angry? MiMi knows she is meant for something greater. This belief, together with tragedy, moves her from the mixed-religion home of her early childhood to Orthodox Judaism in her teens, to the establishment and development of her cult in the Israeli desert. Deeply affecting and thought-provoking, Memoirs of a False Messiah is the richly told story of a young woman's struggle to find her place in a world reluctant to accept her.

Follow the adventures of a baby boomer born in 1948 from his birth to high school graduation in 1966. Born in a small South Western Pennsylvania town on the edge of Appalachia, the narrator, in a fictional memoir filled with amusing anecdotes, captures life in an absorbing snapshot of coming of age in the Pennsylvania bituminous coalfields of the 1950s.

Written by a direct descendant of the union between Nell Gwyn and King Charles II, Nell Gwyn tells the story of one of England's great folk heroines. Born during a tumultuous period in England's past, Nell Gwyn was spotted selling oranges in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Nell's wit and charm brought her to the attention of numerous suitors, including one of the theater's leading actors, Charles Hart. Under his patronage Nell took to the stage where she became one of London's first professional female actresses, and the finest comedienne in London.

Jack Kerouac’s archive is vast. Throughout his life he was constantly writing, and he meticulously saved and catalogued his material. The result is that beyond the work published in his lifetime there has been a rich stream of posthumous writing that is far from tapped. This collection of previously unpublished writing culled from the Kerouac archive, and as a companion to Paul Maher Jr.'s Becoming Kerouac, spans Kerouac’s adult life, from a journal written at age seventeen to autobiographical reflections a few years before his death.

Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl is more than a historical document—it is a timeless exploration of the human spirit, capturing resilience, hope, and the complexities of identity in the face of unimaginable adversity. This in-depth analysis examines Anne’s personal journey during her two years in hiding, revealing the universal struggles of adolescence, the moral implications of war, and the enduring power of her words. Through her vivid reflections, Anne grapples with themes of self-discovery, family dynamics, and the search for meaning in a world torn apart by hatred and intolerance.

The "utterly compelling, uncommonly beautiful" collection of personal essays (Newsweek) that established Jo Ann Beard as one of the leading writers of her generation. Cousins, mothers, sisters, dolls, dogs, best friends: these are the fixed points in Jo Ann Beard's universe, the constants that...

"Lei sa la differenza fra un piccolo e un grande giornale? Il grande giornale è quello che pubblica anche le notizie che dispiacciono. S’intende, la notizia che ci dispiace la si commenta come più ci piace." — Eugenio Torelli Viollier Dalla Napoli borbonica alla Milano post-unitaria, dalla fondazione del "Corriere" alla battaglia per difenderne l’indipendenza, la straordinaria avventura dell’uomo che dopo l’Italia provò a fare gli italiani."Nacqui a Napoli, il 26 marzo 1842.