Search results for ""author sue william silverman""
University of Nebraska Press How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences
2021 Clara Johnson Award from Jane's Stories Press Foundation 2020 Gold Winner for Autobiography & Memoir in the Foreword INDIES Many are haunted and obsessed by their own eventual deaths, but perhaps no one as much as Sue William Silverman. This thematically linked collection of essays charts Silverman’s attempt to confront her fears of that ultimate unknown. Her dread was fomented in part by a sexual assault, hidden for years, that led to an awareness that death and sex are in some ways inextricable, an everyday reality many women know too well. Through gallows humor, vivid realism, and fantastical speculation, How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences explores this fear of death and the author’s desire to survive it. From cruising New Jersey’s industry-blighted landscape in a gold Plymouth to visiting the emergency room for maladies both real and imagined to suffering the stifling strictness of an intractable piano teacher, Silverman guards her memories for the same reason she resurrects archaic words—to use as talismans to ward off the inevitable. Ultimately, Silverman knows there is no way to survive death physically. Still, through language, commemoration, and metaphor, she searches for a sliver of transcendent immortality.
£16.99
University of Nebraska Press The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew
Gentile reader, and you, Jews, come too. Follow Sue William Silverman, a one-woman cultural mash-up, on her exploration of identity among the mishmash of American idols and ideals that confuse most of us—or should. Pat Boone is our first stop. Now a Tea Party darling, Boone once shone as a squeaky-clean pop music icon of normality, an antidote for Silverman’s own confusing and dangerous home, where being a Jew in a Christian school wasn’t easy, and being the daughter of the Anti-Boone was unspeakable. And yet somehow Silverman found her way, a “gefilte fish swimming upstream,” and found her voice, which in this searching, bracing, hilarious, and moving book tries to make sense of that most troubling American condition: belonging, but to what?Picking apricots on a kibbutz, tramping cross-country in a loathed Volkswagen camper, appearing in a made-for-television version of her own life: Silverman is a bobby-soxer, a baby boomer, a hippy, a lefty, and a rebel with something to say to those of us—most of us—still wondering what to make of ourselves.
£16.99
University of Georgia Press Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You
From age four to 18, Sue William Silverman was sexually abused by her father, a high-ranking government official. This is an often graphic memoir of those years which recounts how Silverman's mother ignored her distress, thus conspiring in an attempt to keep the situation unreported and undetected.
£18.86
University of Nebraska Press Acetylene Torch Songs: Writing True Stories to Ignite the Soul
At times writers—from the unpublished to jaded lifers—need a fire lit under them to pursue the complex work of self-exploration. Acetylene Torch Songs provides that spark for memoirists and essayists seeking mentor-based instruction and inspiration. Drawing on twenty-five years of teaching and mentoring writers, Sue William Silverman stresses practice over theory. She encourages craftiness as well as craft and urges writers to embark on emotional quests in pursuit of their art. Acetylene Torch Songs uniquely illustrates how the writer’s imaginative spirit comes alive on the page through metaphor, literary masks, sensory memories, voice, obsessions, and more. This holistic approach to writing emphasizes how the creative process brings together the heart, mind, and senses to illuminate the human condition through language. Featuring a personal essay in each chapter, Silverman uses her own work to model a specific concept or approach, demonstrating how obsessions, secrets, and memories can burn on the page. Through guided prompts, worksheets, checklists, publishing advice, personal essays, and strategies, Silverman encourages writers to find the confidence and courage to write stories that reach beyond the page through their intimacy, social engagement, and honesty.
£20.99
