A Slant of Light
Contemporary Women Writers of the Hudson Valley
A collection of contemporary prose and poetry by women writers from New York’s Hudson Valley.
Description
Finalist for the 2014 Next Generation Indie Book Awards in the Women's Issues category
Finalist for the 2014 International Book Award in the Fiction: Women's Literature/Chick Lit category presented by American Book Fest
Finalist for the 2014 Beverly Hills International Book Award in the Anthology category
Award-Winner in the Fiction: Anthologies category of The 2013 USA Best Book Awards, sponsored by USA Book News
2014 da Vinci Eye presented by the Hopewell Publications
This volume celebrates the contemporary prose and poetry of more than a hundred women from New York's Hudson Valley. Drawing on writers from the eastern border of New York State to the foothills of the Catskills, and along the length of the Hudson River from Westchester to Albany, editors Laurence Carr and Jan Zlotnik Schmidt bring together a wide variety of female voices that evocatively address issues that touch not only women, but also every reader who desires insight into the human experience.
A Slant of Light is divided into five sections, each addressing a theme of women's lives. The book begins with "Mythos": representations and revisions of myths of women. The second section, "Body and Gender," explores visions of the body, gender socialization, and women's roles. The third section, "Identity," presents works that examine both how women see themselves and how others see them. The fourth section brings together works presenting women in a variety of roles, such as parent, child, partner, and lover. The last, "Woman in the World," collects works that meditate on our collective fate in a global world.
What distinguishes this volume is the diversity of women's perspectives in terms of age, ethnicity, cultural background, and subject matter. The book brings together voices both lyrical and edgy, and challenges readers to think deeply about our changing lives in the twenty-first century.
Laurence Carr teaches creative and dramatic writing at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He is the author of Pancake Hollow Primer: A Hudson Valley Story and The Wytheport Tales, the coeditor (with Joann Deiudicibus, Penny Freel, and Rachel Rigolino) of WaterWrites: A Hudson River Anthology in Celebration of the Hudson 400, and the editor of Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers, all published by Codhill Press. A SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor at New Paltz, Jan Zlotnik Schmidt teaches courses in composition, autobiography, creative writing, American literature, women's literature, and Holocaust studies. Her books include two volumes of poetry, We Speak in Tongues and She Had This Memory. She is the editor of Women/Writing/Teaching, also published by SUNY Press, and the coauthor (with Carley Rees Bogarad and Lynne Crockett) of Legacies: Fiction, Poetry, Drama, Nonfiction.
Reviews
"Carr and Schmidt's generous anthology offers an astonishing diversity of female voices. " — Chronogram