The Literary Review Raves about Grace Cavalieri’s Other Voices, Other Lives
A new review of Grace Cavalieri's Legacy Book, Other Voices, Other Lives, was recently published in the long-running literary magazine The Literary Review. Author Karin Falcone Krieger calls Grace Cavalieri "a living legend" in their glowing review of the book. Fascinated by Grace Cavalieri's interpolated interviews with US Poets Laureate, Falcone lauds "[Other Voices, Other Lives] opens doors to so many other authors’ work, it creates a reading list to last even longer. Trust we are in good company, and it is a lively party."
In her review, Falcone also gives special attention to Grace's incredible life captured in her 2016 memoir, Life Upon a Wicked Stage, and to the situating introduction to OVOL from Rose Solari that "Rose Solari’s introduction is in the voice of a loving friend, focusing on tender specifics of that relationship, and the warmth of Cavalieri’s mentorship." Most people don't know about the hand Cavalieri had in shaping PBS, in crafting WPFW, or the massive influence of her NPR show "The Poet and The Poem," but it is clear Krieger did their research.
In a lovely moment, the reviewer describes a dream they had after reading Other Voices, Other Lives, "I fell asleep reading this book and dreamt I got to meet Grace Cavalieri in the hallways of WPFW where she once broadcast “The Poet and the Poem.” On the walls were 5-foot high pencil sketches of the faces of poets she had interviewed on the show: a wall of fame in progress. She’s talking quickly and gesturing to the drawings, explaining how she has recruited art students to complete the portraits, creating murals of the poets on the curved walls of 1970’s architecture in the radio station. The dream felt like the essence of her generous and community-building nature and was reminiscent of that golden age of PBS children’s programming I grew up with, which she had quietly shaped as well."
Small Press Week 2018: Monday, a look back at the Inception of ASP
We’d been talking about founding a press for a few years. I was becoming increasingly frustrated and angry about what was happening to some of the books I’d edited, and to some of my writer friends. Some of the books I worked on already had committed publishers, who knew my work and wanted me involved, and that’s great. But sometimes I was hired by a writer who had a publisher but knew they were not going to give the book a thorough edit – there is less and less of that going on these days, as you can see from opening even a big-name title. And I think — we think — that that is awful. If you are published by ASP, you get a thorough and very fine edit…
Featured Audio: “The Lovesick Lake,” a Story by James J Patterson
“Lovers of the personal essay should be rejoicing in the streets at word of this collection. For readers and acquaintances of Jimmy Patterson, it is long overdue, but the author was born in Washington, D.C., where the machinery of progress is congenitally slow. So this book, in many important ways – is what all satisfying collections of autobiographical essays should be – a mirror of place.” Rick Walter
Armistice Day, known in the US as Veteran’s Day, is now a work week past, but for James J Patterson it is a memory and idea that refuses to restrain itself to a 24 hour period. Yesterday we published his moving account of those veterans of The Great War he knew growing up, memorializing and contextualizing them for an audience whose experience of the war may only be through the muddy, pained faces in old photographs…
The World of Yesterday (Armistice Day, 2018)
My father always said that his first memory was of standing on the couch in his parent’s living room, small hands on the back cushion, peering out a picture widow at a neighborhood street in Bend, Oregon. There is a slow-moving line of cars and horse-drawn carriages inching its way down the lane. The line of cars is there every day, and every day he stands there and watches. His street is a long one and at the end of it is the cemetery. He is not allowed to go outside to play. Death is all anyone talks about. Death from a great flu epidemic. Death from a great war just ending. Everyone has lost someone. Most have lost a few. It is 1918…