Jocelyn Banks has always felt like an outsider in the ballet world. She was raised in rural Louisiana, taught to scrap and hustle for the life she wanted. And ever since Jocelyn found ballet, she has been able to take her life into her own hands. After years of success at the North American Ballet, she[read more...]
Beginning with several dozen new poems that have appeared in The New Yorker, among other publications, this volume is a tour through Zarin's five exquisitely made collections, beginning with The Swordfish Tooth, published in 1989. Zarin, a poet in the line of Elizabeth Bishop, allows the reader to experience human truths through a poem's shape and music,[read more...]
In the nineteenth century, the complex cultural meaning of hair was not only significant, but it could also impact one's place in society. After the Civil War, hairdressing was also a growing profession and the hair industry a mainstay of local, national, and international commerce. In Beyond Vanity, Elizabeth Block expands the nascent field of hair[read more...]
With his father dead, a gifted, fourteen-year-old pianist finds himself sent away from his Caribbean home against his will, to study classical music in the U.S. with a family friend he's never met. His first angry, frightened step away from the controlling mother he's never been able to reach becomes a sharp break with her[read more...]
In an age when most of us carry a device seemingly capable of freeze-framing the world, Benjamin Swett writes with refreshing clarity on the way of the true photographer. The Picture Not Taken combines cultural criticism with personal revelation to examine how the lived experience of photography can endow the mundane with meaning while bringing attention to[read more...]