The Flitting: A Memoir of Fathers, Sons, and Butterflies

The Flitting: A Memoir of Fathers, Sons, and Butterflies
Author: Ben Masters
Publisher: Tin House Books
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2024-10-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1959030892

"A book with wings."—Ali Smith A deeply felt and moving memoir about how butterflies become a vital connection between a son and his dying father. The Flitting: A Memoir of Fathers, Sons, and Butterflies is a masterful and touching memoir blending natural history, pop culture, and literary biography—delivering a richly layered and nuanced portrait of a son’s attempt, after years of stubborn resistance, to take on his dying father’s love of the natural world. With his father unable to leave the house and follow the butterfly cycle for the first time since he was a child, Masters endeavors to become his connection to the outdoors and his treasured butterflies, reporting back with stories of beloved species—Purple Emperors, Lulworth Skippers, Wood Whites and Silver-studded Blues—and with stories of the woods and meadows that are their habitats and once were his. Structured around a series of exchanges and remembrances, butterflies become a way of talking about masculinity, memory, generational differences, and ultimately loss and continuation. Masters takes readers on an unlikely journey where Luther Vandross and The Sopranos rub shoulders with the likes of Angela Carter and Virginia Woolf on butterflies and gender; the metamorphoses of Prince; Zadie Smith on Joni Mitchell and how sensibilities evolve; and the lives and works of Vladimir Nabokov and other literary lepidopterists. In this beautiful debut memoir, Ben Masters offers an intensely authentic, unforgettable portrait of a father and son sharing passions, lessons, and regrets before they run out of time.

The King of Violins

The King of Violins
Author: M.G. Crisci
Publisher: eBookIt.com
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2021
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1456635069

HOW CHINA'S MOST CELEBRATED VIOLIN PRODIGY BECAME AN ENEMY OF STATE. The King of Violins is the heartbreaking story of China's most celebrated violin prodigy, Ma Sicong, who composed his first concerto at the age of 12. During his career, this gentle, dignified man composed 57 of the world's best-known symphonies and concertos and performed in front of hundreds of sold-out audiences across the globe. Chairman Mao Zedong declared Ma Sicong "a national treasure" and nicknamed him The King of Violins. Soon, Chairman Mao's brutal Cultural Revolution distorted the truth of Ma's life and work. He is forced to wear a dunce cap, and is publicly humiliated and physically abused by cadres of Red Guards as "a vile product of bourgeois thinking." Ma and his family make a breath-taking escape in the darkness to America. After Chairman Mao died in 1976, the real circumstances of Ma's poignant, bittersweet life were buried in the pages of history by an embarrassed Chinese government. Eleven years later, Ma died at the age of 76 in Philadelphia. The King of Violins, written in cooperation with all of Ma's remaining family members, and is the first politically balanced life story about this generous, conflicted musical genius. (Contains 89 rare vintage photographs).

Before and After the Book Deal

Before and After the Book Deal
Author: Courtney Maum
Publisher: Catapult
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2020-01-07
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1948226413

Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about publishing but were too afraid to ask is right here in this funny, candid guide written by an acclaimed author. There are countless books on the market about how to write better but very few books on how to break into the marketplace with your first book. Cutting through the noise (and very mixed advice) online, while both dispelling rumors and remaining positive, Courtney Maum's Before and After the Book Deal is a one–of–a–kind resource that can help you get your book published. Before and After the Book Deal: A Writer's Guide to Finishing, Publishing, Promoting, and Surviving Your First Book has over 150 contributors from all walks of the industry, including international bestselling authors Anthony Doerr, Roxane Gay, Garth Greenwell, Lisa Ko, R. O. Kwon, Rebecca Makkai, and Ottessa Moshfegh, alongside cult favorites Sarah Gerard, Melissa Febos, Mitchell S. Jackson, and Mira Jacob. Agents, film scouts, film producers, translators, disability and minority activists, and power agents and editors also weigh in, offering advice and sharing intimate anecdotes about even the most taboo topics in the industry. Their wisdom will help aspiring authors find a foothold in the publishing world and navigate the challenges of life before and after publication with sanity and grace. Are MFA programs worth the time and money? How do people actually sit down and finish a novel? Did you get a good advance? What do you do when you feel envious of other writers? And why the heck aren’t your friends saying anything about your book? Covering questions ranging from the logistical to the existential (and everything in between), Before and After the Book Deal is the definitive guide for anyone who has ever wanted to know what it’s really like to be an author.

A Door Behind A Door

A Door Behind A Door
Author: Yelena Moskovich
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio
Total Pages: 151
Release: 2021-05-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1953387039

"A Door Behind a Door is loose, dreamy, and symbol-packed... The resurfacing of characters from Olga’s past in her new city speaks to the theme of immigration in the novel, of new homes and the passage from old to new—a passage that is perhaps not ever fully complete in the sense that the past cannot be shaken." —Marta Balcewicz, Ploughshares In Yelena Moskovich's spellbinding new novel, A Door Behind A Door, we meet Olga, who immigrates as part of the Soviet diaspora of ’91 to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There she grows up and meets a girl and falls in love, beginning to believe that she can settle down. But a phone call from a bad man from her past brings to life a haunted childhood in an apartment building in the Soviet Union: an unexplained murder in her block, a supernatural stray dog, and the mystery of her beloved brother Moshe, who lost an eye and later vanished. We get pulled into Olga’s past as she puzzles her way through an underground Midwestern Russian mafia, in pursuit of a string of mathematical stabbings.

The Flitting

The Flitting
Author: Ben Masters
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2024-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781959030812

A deeply felt and moving memoir about how butterflies become a vital connection between a son and his dying father.

The Names of All the Flowers

The Names of All the Flowers
Author: Melissa Valentine
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2020-07-14
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1936932865

A “poignant, painful, and gorgeous” memoir that explores siblinghood, adolescence, and grief for a family shattered by loss (Alicia Garza, cocreator, Black Lives Matter). Melissa and her older brother Junior grow up running around the disparate neighborhoods of 1990s Oakland, two of six children to a white Quaker father and a black Southern mother. But as Junior approaches adolescence, a bullying incident and later a violent attack in school leave him searching for power and a sense of self in all the wrong places; he develops a hard front and falls into drug dealing. Right before Junior’s twentieth birthday, the family is torn apart when he is murdered as a result of gun violence. The Names of All the Flowers connects one tragic death to a collective grief for all black people who die too young. A lyrical recounting of a life lost, Melissa Valentine’s debut memoir is an intimate portrait of a family fractured by the school-to-prison pipeline and an enduring love letter to an adored older brother. It is a call for justice amid endless cycles of violence, grief, and trauma, declaring: “We are all witness and therefore no one is spared from this loss.” “A portrait of a place, a person who died too young, the systems that led to that death, and the keen insights of the author herself. Lyrical and smart, with appropriate undercurrents of rage.” —Emily Raboteau, author of Searching for Zion “Eloquently poignant.” —Kirkus Reviews

Broken Metropolis

Broken Metropolis
Author: Dave Ring
Publisher:
Total Pages: 145
Release: 2018-06
Genre: City and town life
ISBN: 9780996103756

Fiction. LGBTQIA Studies. BROKEN METROPOLIS: QUEER TALES OF CITY THAT NEVER WAS (edited by dave ring) explores the edges of urban fantasy through queer narratives in the tradition of Swords of the Rainbow (Alyson Publications, 1996) and Bending the Landscape (Overlook Books, 1997). This collection contains ten of those edges, each one bright and gleaming, from Claire Rudy Foster's story of a scientist learning to accept not only herself but the very real impact of astrology on her love life, to Caspian Gray's tale of a young man looking for an urban legend in the halls of a hospital ward so that he can save the matriarch of his found family. Queer communities hold multitudes, and fantasy writing is a place to explore the magic of possibility. Come explore some of those possibilities in a city that never was.

How To Judge A Book By Its Lover

How To Judge A Book By Its Lover
Author: Jessica Jiji
Publisher:
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2020-09-07
Genre:
ISBN: 9781735667607

HOW TO TELL A BOOK BY ITS LOVER, by Jessica Jiji, is a fast-paced, funny and endearing rom-com treat. Long Island-born Laurel Linden, who fancies herself a writer, craves a publishing contract for her 600-page historical novel about Napoleon Bonaparte's hairdresser. Despite mounting evidence that her book is a mess, Laurel holds out hope it will be a bestseller, biding her time until she's fabulously famous by earning cash as a New York City dog walker. Meanwhile, she has to steel herself against everyone urging her to quit writing fiction and get a real job, especially sister Jenna, the drama-queen-turned-perfect-housewife who always thinks she knows best. Laurel wants to date a sexy and sophisticated New Yorker but her only offer is from Irwin, a suburban pediatric dentist. With no hope of success in her career or her love life, she decides to accept a job at a girdle-industry trade magazine and give Irwin a shot at her heart. That's when she lands her newest dog-walking client - Anderson Gallant, the son of one of the most powerful men in publishing - and meets a handsome Belgian art critic named Lucien. Her best friend Vanessa encourages Laurel to find the guts to manipulate Anderson into giving her a huge book deal, nab Lucien as her boyfriend and stand up to Jenna. But, slowly and dreadfully, Laurel comes to realize that her epic "Napoleon's Hairdresser" is hilariously bad, Lucien is a pretentious jerk, and, worst of all, Vanessa is a frenemy. In a bold move, Laurel gives up her book contract, her boyfriend and the toxic BFF. And that's when she discovers that life's scariest risk leads to its sweetest happily ever after."A delightfully funny and witty urban tale of a compelling young woman's search for romance and career success that finds a fabulous finale when high dreams and ambitions are adjusted to sweeter, closer-to-home choices." -- Susana Aikin, author of THE WEIGHT OF THE HEART."I loved it. Funny and soulful with lots of jokes. A cross between Seinfeld and Bridget Jones." - Nick Griffin, late night comic.

Hard Mother, Spider Mother, Soft Mother

Hard Mother, Spider Mother, Soft Mother
Author: Hal Y. Zhang
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2019-07-31
Genre:
ISBN: 9780999713761

Hard Mother, Spider Mother, Soft Mother is a story about the imprecise nature of memories and how they can affect our relationships.

Grape!

Grape!
Author: Gabriel Arquilevich
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-09-27
Genre: At-risk youth
ISBN: 9781947548619

Grape is in trouble again! He punched Miss Roof in the arm! Now he's suspended for two weeks, and Principal Clarkson has threatened to send him to Riverwash, a school for problem kids. But he has one last chance. Grape must spend an hour a day writing about his history of trouble, and there's a lot of trouble to choose from... Grape's best friend Lou is by his side, and even though Grape drives his parents crazy, they're pulling for him all the way. But will Grape make sense of it all? Will it be enough to keep him out of Riverwash?