I discovered May Sarton (1912-1995) on the shelves of the local women’s bookstore. You know I covet “sets” and, even though her books were not properly so, there was consistency in their Norton editions: the tidy little pocketbook novels with a splash of colour in a design at the
Julia is lying on the hotel bathroom floor with a nosebleed, a few hours before her literary reading, from her book of poetry, at an event in northern Ontario. She jokes that she’s a “promising” poet, which means that her fee is lower than that paid to poets who
What a delight to be invited to the #1970Club party and to bring Mavis Gallant as my guest. The quintessential short story writer published her novel A Fairly Good Time in 1970. The first chapter is a letter from Shirley Perrigny’s mother, a slippery few pages that spill from
One final bit of MARMing remains for us, MARMers. And I bet many of you are wishing that it actually IS the end of November, as so many of you have more items on your to-do lists right now than you have books on your shelves. I’m wishing it
The call for witnesses in The Stone Diaries resonates throughout Shields’ work: “Life is an endless recruiting of witnesses. It seems we need to be observed in our postures of extravagance or shame, we need attention paid to us. Our own memory is altogether too cherishing, which is the
