HOLIDAY GARLAND OF BOOKS, part 1

It's holiday book-buying time, so here are some additional suggestions for gifts. For more ideas, go to the side bar and take a look at the Books of the Week, as well as Poets of the Week. You'll find plenty to entice a reader there.

In part one of our garland, I've gathered three current books NC or former NC writers.

Here's a new book of stories by a long-time friend of mine, poet and Editor of Shenandoah, R.T Smith. I met Rod many years ago at the Critz Writers Workshop, where A. R. Ammons held forth to a motley crew of us aspiring writers in Virginia. Rod has published numerous books of poetry and has edited Shenandoah right up into the top ranks of the country's literary magazines.



This new collection, as Ann Pancake says, "is part bluegrass symphony, part speaking in tongues... it is the most beautifully sung story collection I have read in years."

George Singleton calls some of the characters "wonderfully warped, melodic, Appalachian" and others "flat-out idiomatic poetic," which ought to whet any one's appetite.

On the menu (consider them appetizers):
Cockers for Christ
Tastes Like Chicken
Sugar
Fig Honey
Red Jar
Ruminants.....
Sound good? You can go to http://www.irisbooks.com/ to order the boo

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John Amen's new book, At the Threshold of Alchemy, holds the same intensity and surprising turns of language and perspective that have marked his earlier work. I find his poetry energizing, instructive, exhilarating, and for those long dark nights that follow Christmas, it would be ideal for keeping one's imagination pulsing. John will be coming to WCU in the spring to take part in our WCU Spring Literary Festival, so I will be posting more about him in March.



"Poems such as these, and there are plenty in this book—John Amen’s third—keep resounding in the mind the way great poetry does...."
—Ricardo Nirenberg, Offcourse Literary Journal

John is the author of three collections of poetry: Christening the Dancer (Uccelli Press 2003), More of Me Disappears (Cross-Cultural Communications 2005), and At the Threshold of Alchemy (Presa 2009), and has released two folk/folk rock CDs, All I’ll Never Need and Ridiculous Empire (Cool Midget). He is also an artist, working primarily with acrylics on canvas. Amen travels widely giving readings, doing musical performances, and conducting workshops. Further information is available on his website: http:///. Contact: pedmagazine@carolina.rr.com

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Linda Annas Ferguson now lives in Charleston, SC, but she is a native North Carolinian. Her latest book, Dirt Sandwich, is just out from Press 53 in Winston-Salem.

Linda is the author of five collections of poetry, including Bird Missing from One Shoulder (WordTech Editions, 2007); Stepping on Cracks in the Sidewalk (Finishing Line Press, 2006); Last Chance to Be Lost (Kentucky Writers’ Coalition, 2004); and It’s Hard to Hate a Broken Thing (Palanquin Press, University of S.C. Aiken, 2002). She was the 2005 Poetry Fellow for the South Carolina Arts Commission and served as the 2003-04 Poet-in-Residence for the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, S.C. A recipient of the Poetry Fellowship of the South Carolina Academy of Authors, she is a member of the Academy’s Board of Governors. She was a featured poet for the Library of Congress Poetry at Noon Series. Her work is archived by Furman University Special Collections in the James B. Duke Library. A North Carolina native, she now resides in Charleston, SC. Visit her website at http://www.lindaannasferguson.com/.