NEW! Come As You Are
Come As You Are by Christine Weiser is a novel about balancing work, family, and a chick rock trio. Ten years earlier, these thirty-something women were best friends who played in the late ‘90s Philadelphia girl group, Broad Street. Time and circumstances drove them apart, but when they get an invitation to play an esteemed national tour, they put aside their differences to reform their old band. Click here to order a copy.
NEW! 50 Over 50
50 Over 50: A Celebration of Established and Emerging Women Writers is a superb collection of poetry, essays, and fiction by women over age 50. This anthology features work by notable authors like Robin Black, Bonnie Jo Campbell, J.C. Todd, Vickie A. Carr, and Rachel Pastan. While many of the writers included are emerging authors, all of the work has something funny, thoughtful, and compelling to say about sex, family, loss, and love. The books will be on sale at PS Books and Philadelphia Stories events and online at Amazon and IndieBound. Click here for more details.
Terrific review of Anne Kaier’s Home with Henry
PS Books is pleased to share this wonderful new review of Anne Kaier’s engaging memoir Home with Henry. If you’d like to meet Anne in person and pick up a signed copy, or copies, of the book (it makes a thoughtful and much-appreciated gift!), make plans to attend her reading with Liz Abrams-Morley at Head House Books on May 4th!
Reviewed by Jeanne
The guy in the blue truck seemed surprised that a middle aged woman in a gray coat would hold up traffic, but I enjoyed that momentary feeling of power.
When Anne Kaier sees the orange lump of fur in the road, she carefully drives over it, not wanting to be the one to further desecrate the body. When she looks in her rear view mirror and sees the tail move, she turns around and goes back. She intends to just move the body out of the road, but when she feels the warmth behind his ears she takes him to her vet instead.
As it turns out, the cat isn’t badly injured. He is, however, nearly feral, but Anne has committed herself to him. She dubs him Henry, and takes him home where he hides in her spare bedroom. Her resident cat, Lucille, doesn’t seem to mind the newcomer but is happy to still have Anne to herself. Anne is determined to try to break through to her new addition. She spends time in the room reading aloud, coaxes him with treats, and finally starts dismantling his little world in an effort to force him out.
This is a slim little book, but one that’s difficult to characterize. It’s definitely not a “how to” book, nor is it a rapturous celebration of all things feline. It’s mostly a gentle, thoughtful book about an older, still single woman succeeding on her own terms. It’s not maudlin, it’s not strident, and it’s not a cry in the wilderness. It’s about relationships, trust, and being comfortable in your own skin, though the author makes all these points without preaching or pontificating or navel-gazing. I was not surprised when I checked the author’s bio to find she is an award-winning essayist and a poet. She writes cleanly and well. At only 102 pages, she covers a lot of territory but in a painless way. The book is written as a journal, and I was interested to see what each day would bring.
I enjoyed my visit with Anne and with Henry. I would like a chance to visit with them again.
A Literary Harvest Celebration
Buy local, eat local, read local!
Please join Philadelphia Stories and publisher PS Books at Commonwealth On Queen for a celebration of local writers. Featuring readings by contributors to The Best of Philadelphia Stories: 10th Anniversary Edition, an anthology of short fiction, poetry, and essays, as well as a special guest appearance by Best American Essays notable author Anne Kaier, who will read and sign copies of her just-published memoir Home with Henry.
Monday, November 24
7:30 p.m.
Commonwealth On Queen
301 North Queen Street, Lancaster, PA
Open mic session following the reading.
Free and open to the public.
For more information, email PS Books editor Tara Smith, psbooks@philadelphiastories.org
Coming soon from PS Books!
Home with Henry: A Memoir
by Anne Kaier
Driving home from work one evening, Anne Kaier passed a cat who had been hit on the road. One week later, she found herself living with a feral cat in the city house she’d recently moved into alone. Even Anne was surprised by what happened as she tried to tame this wild creature.
Anne Kaier will be reading at the Rosemont Writer’s Retreat in the Kistler Library on Tuesday, June 24th, at noon.
Cover image: Copyright Carol Chu
The day after Mother’s Day . . .
How will you celebrate the remarkable women in YOUR life this Mother’s Day?
Extraordinary Gifts: Remarkable Women of the Delaware Valley available at:
- Rosemont Book Festival, Saturday, April 26th
https://www.facebook.com/RosemontCollegeBookFestival
- Kennett Square Farmer’s Market, May 2nd
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kennett-Square-Farmers-Market/268136120208
- White Clay Creek Fest, May 3rd
From a prison cell at Terezin
to the Roundhouse in Philadelphia—Feig is
the compelling story of an Auschwitz survivor
David Gold has never done a daring thing in his life—until he meets Jacob Feig, a survivor of Auschwitz who stands accused of murder.
“In the end, Feig is really David Gold’s book. As he listens to the stories of survivors, he emerges from his safe isolation—and his insistence that they share their hardest, deepest secrets leads to a deeper connection to the world.”
—Simone Zelitch, author of Louisa and Assistant Chair of Literature
and Creative Writing, Community College of Philadelphia
“Feig is a powerfully prophetic work that is terrifying and heartbreaking … The horror and the hatred of surviving the Holocaust bring readers into the deeper truths hidden in a world we would like to forget.”
—D.L. Wilson, author of Unholy Grail and Sirocco
“Piercing the often forbidding subject of the Holocaust with grace, humanity, and compassion … an engaging and beautifully written story of how one generation is inextricably linked to the next. His well-crafted plot and richly drawn characters imbue this tale with a sense of loss and possibility.”
—Ellie Slott Fisher, author of Mom, There’s a Man in the Kitchen
and He’s Wearing your Robe, and It’s Either Her or Me
Richard D. Bank, Esq., is the author of six books, including The Everything Guide to Writing Nonfiction (Adams Media, 2010). He is on the faculty at Rosemont College in the Graduate Publishing and MFA in Creative Writing programs. Feig is his first novel.
For media inquiries, readings, or other publicity, please contact richardbank1@verizon.net or carla@philadelphiastories.org
Second Oldest: A Poetic History of Philadelphia
PS Books is pleased to announce the publication of Second Oldest: A Poetic History of Philadelphia by Blythe Davenport.
The poems in Second Oldest tell the story of the city and her people, past and present, through fresh and haunting images.
“Blythe Davenport’s mastery of the intricate and unexpected image guides us back and forth from past to present in her poetic portraits of the Philadelphia landscape. She fills her poems with voices, places, and lines like ‘the sun flexes his supernova arm, punching/a perfect round brilliant/in the bruised evening sky.’ This is a book well worth reading and rereading for its informed voice, its subtlety, its grace.”
—Donna Wolf-Palacio, author of What I Don’t Know
About the author
Blythe Davenport has found her muse in Philadelphia—the city past and present, abandoned and inhabited, real and imagined. Philadelphia is home to icons both hallowed and reviled, and its role in United States history has a mythological quality. Blythe received her BA from St John’s College and her MFA in Creative Writing from Rosemont College. Her writing can be found in Chronogram Magazine, Painted Bride Quarterly, Mad Poets Review, and the PS Books anthology Forgotten Philadelphia: Art and Writing Inspired by Philadelphia Heritage Sites. This is her first book.
http://www.philadelphiastories.org/free-reading-book-launch-fergies-pub
Interview with Author, Christina Delia
By Chara Kramer
Normally a humorous writer for “Bride Dish with Mags & Dags,” Christina Delia pulled out the stops for a very moving piece for PS Book’s Anthology, “Forgotten Philadelphia.” I got the chance to ask her some questions about not only her advice column, but about her piece, “Rainy Day,” for “Forgotten Philadelphia.”
Kramer: What do you think is the one event or single influence that initiated you into writing?
Delia: There was not one specific event, more like a series of events. My mother named me after the poet Christina Rossetti. I knew growing up that I was named for an important woman who was a writer.
I learned how to read a little late, but I loved hearing stories read aloud. The book Leo the Late Bloomer by Robert Kraus helped me immensely. It taught me it was okay to learn at my own pace. When I finally learned how to read, it was like everything clicked. I spent more time in Oz and Narnia and Green Gables than anywhere else. I began writing my own stories. My second grade teacher Mrs. Glass had a class “publishing company” where stories were laminated. I remember how proud I felt when she selected one of my stories for publication/lamination. I still have it, complete with my author’s bio that reads: Christina Delia’s favorite food is pizza. Her favorite show is “Full House.” She spends most of her time reading books and writing stories. She wants to be a writer when she grows up. If you replace “Full House” with “Mad Men,” this holds true today.
Kramer: What would you say is your favorite genre to write in?
Delia: I like to move between humor and heartbreak. There is this beautiful balance. I feel like underneath all humor is the groundwork for heartbreak and if you know it’s there, you can laugh and be merry, just don’t look down. Not a genre per se, but this is how I write.
I do love writing humor, because it evens out the sadness. All of my favorite things are both happy and sad; movies like “Ed Wood” and “My Man Godfrey.” I remember as a kid, I loved the Shirley Jackson story “The Sneaker Crisis” and was fascinated when I read her other stories, like “The Possibility of Evil” and “The Lottery.” I couldn’t believe this woman could leave me so delighted after one story, and then so horrified after the next. My favorite short story is J.D. Salinger’s “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut.” I can go back and re-read it and no matter what, one sentence will have me snicker and the next, tear up.
Kramer: For your piece “Rainy Day” in “Forgotten Philadelphia,” you wrote about a bank in Kensington. What kind of brainstorming did you need to do to get you to the story?
Delia: At the time I wrote this piece, I was pregnant and on strict bed rest. I didn’t know if I was going to have my baby prematurely, or at all. I was sad, scared and beyond frustrated. I started researching this building, and I believe I assigned a lot of my personal feelings to it. At one time the bank was so grand: it had all of this life in it, all of this energy. Now its future was uncertain. I felt like my life and the bank’s life were parallel. The opportunity to write this was a cosmic gift.
Kramer: What made you choose a more central view instead of a specific character point of view for your piece for “Forgotten Philadelphia?”
Delia: It never occurred to me to pick a specific character, because I kept thinking about this gorgeous, crumbling building, and all of the different lives that stepped in and out of it over the years. One character wouldn’t have been enough for all of that energy. I think especially since the bank is no longer in use, for me it was like there was all this time to reminisce. The building itself could yearn and mourn, like a widow who wears black well after the service, and for the rest of her days.
Kramer: You also write for the satirical advice column, “Bride Dish with Mags & Dags,” for Happy Women Magazine, which gives advice to “brides who don’t know any better.” As more of a humorous writer, what was it like reaching into a heartfelt and sentimental story like “Rainy Day?”
Delia: When I wrote “Rainy Day” I didn’t feel much like laughing, but I did nod at things I find humorous, like the differences between modern men and the no-nonsense men of days past. The idea of who would win in a fight, the man with the ergonomic baby carrier or the more macho guy…if it was a humor piece I would have expanded greatly upon that. Because it had a more somber tone, I just nodded in its general direction.
Kramer: Is there anything that you are coming out with soon that we can look forward to?
Delia: I am working on a short story collection, tentatively titled As I Live and Breathe. I have always loved that expression, and the idea came to me to interweave fragments of my personal and familial history into the fantasy world of fiction. As a kid, I lived in a magical world, but then you grow up and everything is bleak or serious. I like how the phrase, “as I live and breathe” denotes wonder and astonishment, which is what I aim to do with these stories: layer magic into my real world.
Come Join Shaun Haurin and J.C. Todd As We Reveal…
The authors from the collection Stripped.
Reading: PS Authors Read at Fergie’s Pub
Start: 02/09/2013 2:00 pm
End: 02/09/2013 4:00 pm
Winter 2013
Join us a for a pint of Guinness and some great readings featuring authors from our Winter 2013 issue and PS Books.
When: Saturday, February 9, 2-4pm
Where: Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom St., Philadelphia
One year after the PS Books launch of STRIPPED, the anonymous collection of flash fiction, editor Nicole Monaghan will reveal the author identities of the stories included in the collection. Did a male or female author write the story? Nicole and select authors will read excerpts of STRIPPED—see if you can guess.
Authors from PS Books and the Winter 2013 issue of Philadelphia Stories will also read. These authors include:
J. C. Todd’s work appeared in PS Books’ first art book, Forgotten Philadelphia. JC has been tramping since childhood—Long Island’s beaches, Yucatan’s scrub jungle, Hanoi’s Hang alleys, the waldweg of Wiepersdorf, Germany, and the John Heinz Memorial Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum. An award-winning poet and author of What Space This Body, she teaches creative writing at Bryn Mawr College and in the M. F. A. program at Rosemont College.
Forgotten Philadelphia Now On Sale
Shaun Haurin will read from his new short story collection from PS Books, Public Displays of Affectation. His fiction has appeared in Philadelphia Stories, The Ledge Poetry & Fiction Magazine, and The Baltimore Review.
psbooks.wordpress.com 