"During my years as a patient, I felt a guilty and unshakeable conviction that I was completely sane. Of course, my notion that patients were expected to be crazy was naïve, but I had swallowed whole the ideology that connects madness to beauty of spirit
A sharply observed comic novel about a writer straining against the role of faculty wifeThis first novel from the acclaimed memoirist Emily Fox Gordon is a tart, intelligent comedy of manners set on the campus of a large Southern university. It is also a
By turns humorous, learned, celebratory, and elegiac, Lopate displays a keen intelligence and a flair for language that turn bits of common, everyday life into resonant narrative. This collection maintains a conversational charm while taking the contempor
From memoir to journalism, personal essays to cultural criticism - this unique, indispensable anthology brings together fifty unforgettable works from all genres of creative nonfiction. Selected by five hundred writers, English professors, and creative w
For more than four hundred years, the personal essay has been one of the richest and most vibrant of all literary forms. Distinguished from the detached formal essay by its friendly, conversational tone, its loose structure, and its drive toward candor
East Side, West Side, from the Little Red Lighthouse to Battery Park City, the wonders of Manhattan's waterfront are both celebrated and secret -- hidden in plain sight. In his brilliant exploration of this defining yet neglected shoreline, personal essay
“Immensely readable essays.…[Phillip Lopate] remains ‘a storyteller at heart’ who can liven up any subject with nimble anecdotes from his life.…Delightful” (The New York Times Book Review).In this stunning collection of personal essays, distin
