Saturday April 25, 2015
Signing: 1:00
Aftermath Lounge $16.99
Philadelphia, PA: Calypso Editions (2015)
“I love these stories. They’re so smart, beautiful, true—and so real—that they seemed like part of my own history. I felt homesick in the best way, flooded with a kind of saddened joy. They snuffed the gimlet-eyed adult and brought to life again, for a while, the wondrous child.”
—Brad Watson, Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives
“I like these new stories so much it’s hard to know where to start. But a good place to begin would be . . . well, Place. She brings it to life like few writers can. You can almost feel the heavy air on your skin. As for her characters, they’re three-dimensional people who are so real, you feel like they’re in the room with you. She’s got a great ear, a fine eye, and something else that you can’t buy—namely, a very large heart.”
—Steve Yarbrough, The Realm of Last Chances
“Aftermath Lounge is a beautiful, compelling collection, the emotions as powerfully charged as the winds of a hurricane. Margaret McMullan writes movingly about those living in and pulling themselves out of destruction and chaos and loss to salvage all they can of love and redemption. From the voices of orphaned children to the least likely man to don a Santa Claus suit, there are moments of devastation, comic relief and grace.”
—Jill McCorkle, Life After Life
“In Aftermath Lounge each short story, like a homing pigeon, returns to the Gulf Coast to explore how its people struggle with the ghost of Hurricane Katrina. With riveting prose, Margaret McMullan tracks the weblike connections of family and friends haunted by the storm from Pass Christian, Mississippi, to Chicago.
—William Ferris, The Storied South: Voices of Writers and Artists
“How strange, that the best apocalyptic fiction of the year should come to us, not borne on the maelstrom of nuclear fire or horrific epidemic, but rather in this series of beautifully crafted and masterfully interwoven literary stories. In Aftermath, our humanity is not simply swept away by the fury and chaos of Katrina; rather, it is tested, sometimes broken, sometimes intensified, and ultimately renewed by the deluge. A hopeful Book of Revelation.”
—Pinckney Benedict, Miracle Boy and Other Stories
Saturday April 25, 2015
Signing: 1:00
Every Father’s Daughter: Twenty-four Women Writers Remember Their Fathers $29.95
Kingston, NY: McPherson (2015)
“What is it about the relationship between fathers and daughters that provokes so much exquisite tenderness, satisfying communion, longing for more, idealization from both ends, followed often if not inevitably by disappointment, hurt, and the need to understand and forgive, or to finger the guilt of not understanding and loving enough?” writes Phillip Lopate, in his introduction to Every Father’s Daughter, a collection of 25 personal essays by women writers writing about their fathers. The editor, Margaret McMullan, is herself a distinguished novelist and educator. About half of these essays were written by invitation for this anthology; others were selected by Ms. McMullan and her associate, Philip Lopate, who provides an introduction. The contributors include many well-known writers—Alice Munro, Jayne Anne Phillips, Alexandra Styron, Ann Hood, Bobbie Ann Mason, Maxine Hong Kingston, among others—as well as writers less well-known but no less cogent, inventive, perceptive, lacerating, questioning, or loving of their fathers.
Includes Jane Smiley, Bobbie Ann Mason, Bliss Broyard, Jill McCorkle, Alexandra Styron, Ann Hood, Joyce Maynard, Lee Smith, Maxine Hong Kingston, Jayne Anne Phillips, Antonya Nelson, Alice Munro, and 12 other writers.