Bøger af Ted Morrissey

It's 1907, and a terrible snow storm rages across the Midwest, burying a rural community but also revealing its citizens' closely guarded secrets. Two farm families - the Johnsons and the Fryes - struggle while their women fight to give birth during the storm. The only midwife must decide which mother and which baby to help, if she is able to make it through the deepening snow at all. The difficult and dangerous births force a host of people to risk going out in the storm, which has turned the familiar countryside into a strange and confusing landscape. Meanwhile, the snow storm has emboldened a band of coyotes that normally stays close to the mysterious and forbidding Hollis Woods, where thirty years before the Hollis children disappeared one by one without a trace. Their ghosts haunt the woods still, say locals. But it turns out everyone has a past that haunts them, and the relentless storm provides the perfect canvas for painting memories and images best left forgotten. The Strophes of Job is a prequel to multi-award-winning Crowsong for the Stricken, a Kirkus Reviews Best Indie Book of 2017 ("strange and beautiful," starred review).

Crowsong for the Stricken is a prismatic novel consisting of twelve pieces orbiting the uncanny events in an isolated Midwestern village. Are the events the work of the divine or the demonic? Is there a more human explanation? The answer may depend on the order in which one encounters the various pieces. Among them is the award-winning title story, which was published in an illustrated edition by Flyleaf Journal. Central to the book is the crowlike figure of Plague, who haunts the villagers, especially the children. More than anything, though, it is a village of secrets-secrets that people keep from each other ... and secrets they keep from themselves. The novel is a prime example of the burgeoning literary style known as Midwestern Gothic. Pieces from the novel have appeared in numerous journals, including Southern Humanities Review, the Tulane Review, ink&coda, and Constellations, as well as the anthology Literature Today.

These twenty stories and twelve sonnets by award-winning author Ted Morrissey are collected here for the first time. Arranged chronologically, they trace his literary development over four decades, beginning in the early 1990s and including work produced within the last few years. Among the earliest stories are "Fische Stories" (published in Glimmer Train Stories) and "Mix" (Paris Transcontinental); transitional stories include "Communion with the Dead" (The Chariton Review) and "Melvill in the Marquesas" (the opening section of his novella Weeping with an Ancient God, named a Best Book of 2015 by Chicago Book Review); and there are three previously uncollected Crowsong stories, extensions of his multi-award-winning 2017 novel Crowsong for the Stricken (which Kirkus Reviews called "strange and beautiful" in a starred review and named a Best Indie Book of 2017). The sonnets are his Laertes Sonnet Sequence (appearing in such journals as Bellevue Literary Review, Grand Little Things and Prime Number Magazine), written in apostrophe to his father Vince, who passed away suddenly in 2012. The collection begins with the author's newly written introduction "Delta of Cassiopeia" in which he shares lessons learned from a lifetime of writing and teaching writing as well as anecdotes about some of the collected material. The introduction also discusses the state of the publishing industry and the reasons why most writers have difficulty establishing a devoted readership.

Trauma Theory As an Approach to Analyzing Literary Texts investigates the hypothesis that cultural trauma affects a society's literary production (really, its artistic production as a whole), resulting in a narrative voice we have come to call "postmodern" since midway through the twentieth century (set in motion, perhaps, by the atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima). A theoretical framework is established based on the work of pioneers in the field of psychoanalysis, like Freud and Lacan, and refined by contemporary trauma theorists (Caruth, Di Prete, Whitehead, et al.). In order to bolster the claim that cultural trauma leads to a "postmodern" narrative style, the Anglo-Saxon Period of English history is examined, and especially the poem Beowulf. Meanwhile, several twentieth-century postmodernists are discussed (Pynchon, Gaddis, Vonnegut, etc.), but especially the work of William H. Gass. In addition to a thorough discussion of literary trauma theory, there is also a chapter on trauma writing, and its practice in the classroom and classroom-like settings. This edition is updated and expanded beyond its related 2016 publication, including a new introduction, notes, and four readings by the author. Special attention is paid to the fiction of William Gass, particularly his novels The Tunnel and Omensetter's Luck, and the novellas "The Pedersen Kid" and "In the Heart of the Heart of the Country." Like the book's 2016 counterpart, Trauma Theory As an Approach to Analyzing Literary Texts includes a Foreword by Robert L. McLaughlin, a leading scholar in the field of American postmodernism.

Margaret Saville's husband has been away on business for weeks and has stopped replying to her letters. Her brother, Robert Walton, has suddenly returned after three years at sea, having barely survived his exploratory voyage to the northern pole. She still grieves the death of her youngest child as she does her best to raise her surviving children, Felix and Agatha. The depth of her brother's trauma becomes clear, so that she must add his health and sanity to her list of cares. A bright spot seems to be a new friendship with a young woman who has just returned to England from the Continent, but Margaret soon discovers that her friend, Mary Shelley, has difficulties of her own, including an eccentric poet husband, Percy, and a book she is struggling to write. Margaret's story unfolds in a series of letters to her absent husband, desperate for him to return or at least to acknowledge her epistles and confirm that he is well. She is lonely, grief-stricken and afraid, yet in these darkest of times a spirit of independence begins to awaken. 'Mrs Saville' begins where Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' ends. This paperback edition includes the short story "A Wintering Place" and an Afterword by the author.

Finding Rebecca in this small, isolated village was the only thing that helped Frankie cope with moving here with her widowed father-in fact, Rebecca's friendship helped her cope with everything. But now something isn't right ... not with Rebecca, not with Rebecca's old friend Shirley who is suddenly back in the picture, and not with Frankie's entire world. More alone than ever, Frankie must explore the curvatures of her hurt without Rebecca by her side. "The Curvatures of Hurt" is set in the 1950s and is part of the Crowsong Universe, stories associated with the prismatic novel Crowsong for the Stricken. This edition includes an Afterword by voice artist Jenny Bacon, who reads the audiobook. She discusses bringing the story to audio, stage and screen.

Margaret Saville's husband has been away on business for weeks and has stopped replying to her letters. Her brother, Robert Walton, has suddenly returned after three years at sea, having barely survived his exploratory voyage to the northern pole. She still grieves the death of her youngest child as she does her best to raise her surviving children, Felix and Agatha. The depth of her brother's trauma becomes clear, so that she must add his health and sanity to her list of cares. A bright spot seems to be a new friendship with a young woman who has just returned to England from the Continent, but Margaret soon discovers that her friend, Mary Shelley, has difficulties of her own, including an eccentric poet husband, Percy, and a book she is struggling to write. Margaret's story unfolds in a series of letters to her absent husband, desperate for him to return or at least to acknowledge her epistles and confirm that he is well. She is lonely, grief-stricken and afraid, yet in these darkest of times a spirit of independence begins to awaken. Mrs Saville begins where the novel Frankenstein ends.