Service Alert
Website maintenance April 24 10pm ET
On Wednesday April 24 at 10pm ET the CELA website will be unavailable for about 15 minutes for planned maintenance.
On Wednesday April 24 at 10pm ET the CELA website will be unavailable for about 15 minutes for planned maintenance.
Showing 1 - 20 of 467 items
By Nelly Arcan. 2011
" Dès son premier roman, Putain (Seuil, 2001), Nelly Arcan na cessé de brasser dans un lyrisme flamboyant quelques thèmes…
obsessionnels, inséparables de sa vie : la dictature de limage, limpossibilité dun rapport innocent à soi-même, le culte vertigineux de la jeunesse, et son envers : la pulsion de mort, qui anime souterrainement les sociétés modernes. Passé le temps du scandale et celui de lémotion, voici donc les derniers échos dune œuvre aussi éblouissante que brève. Burqa de chair : titre terrible, qui agit avec la force dun boomerang en regard de certains débats actuels. On trouvera assemblés ici trois inédits : La robe , Lenfant dans le miroir et La honte . Les deux premiers sont écrits à la première personne, dans ce phrasé tourbillonnant, suffocant, qui était sa marque singulière, celle dun écrivain en danger . Dans le troisième texte, elle décortique avec une inépuisable férocité son expérience humiliante sur un plateau de télévision. " -- 4e de couvBy Rod Michalko, Dan Goodley. 2023
Letters with Smokie captures an epistolic exchange between Dan Goodley and Rod Michalko, or rather, Rod Michalko's late guide dog,…
Smokie. A lively exploration of human-animal relationships and disability as disruption, disturbance, and art, the book offers a refreshing re-evaluation of cultural misunderstandings of disability.By Pradeep Sebastian. 2024
Pradeep Sebastian has been an avid bibliophile and book collector for over a decade. In this collection of essays, he…
paints in full splendour the picture of a life devoted to the romance of books, blending personal experience, revelatory conversations and bewitching legends from the world of books.Meet the biryani chef guarding a prized Ottoman manuscript, track the mysterious 'Book Prince' of Kolkata, and visit the cottage in Kodaikanal that lures book collectors with its siren song. Discover how an emperor's defeat brought illuminated manuscripts into sixteenth-century India, how a rare 1865 edition of Alice in Wonderland surfaced in an Indian bazaar, and much more. An Inky Parade is a window into the charming world of antiquarian book trade in India and around the world, as well as an ode to the book as an object of art, sure to delight every reader.By Lynne Sharon Schwartz. 2024
From an &“American literary treasure&” comes this humorous collection of essays on writing, friendship, family, and aging in an increasingly…
complex world(Publishers Weekly). In this diverting anthology, National Book Award finalist Lynne Sharon Schwartz explores the connections and complications of a life rich with travel, fascinating people, and writing. Her body of work includes acclaimed novels, poetry, essays, memoirs, and English translations of Italian books. With biting wit, My Life at the Wheel dissects the trials of Schwartz&’s recovery from major surgery; reveals her quest for hope and healing in the wake of the 9/11 attacks; comically muses on her fear of driving and her discovery of an &“unknown&” book by Henry James; and weaves colorful stories of hours spent arguing, drinking, and smoking with friends in a neighborhood bar in her native New York City. Her personal narratives range from riotous reflections on finding her calling to be an author, to the challenges of writing while raising children, and from a daughter struggling to understand her parents through adolescent eyes to an aging woman grappling with her own mortality. Relentlessly candid and often painfully funny, Schwartz fearlessly probes life&’s most difficult truths, as she willingly confronts the complexities of growing older in a rapidly changing world.Praise for the writing of Lynne Sharon Schwartz &“[Schwartz&’s]insights are at once sympathetic and drenched with irony.&” —The New York Times &“Reading Schwartz is like a pleasurable visit with a thoughtful and articulate friend.&” —Kirkus Reviews &“I can think of no other contemporary writer who writes so well.&” —Los Angeles Review of BooksBy Philosophical Library. 1968
From the I Ching to The Little Red Book: Two thousand years of wisdom from some of China&’s greatest philosophers…
and political thinkers.The Wisdom of Confucius: Whether considering his own life, human nature, or a society&’s responsibilities, Confucius&’s teachings emphasize morality, social relationships, justice, and sincerity. He pursued social and political reform, leaving a legacy of wisdom that remains vital today. Organized by topic and accompanied with contextual footnotes, this collection of quotations and lessons is often as entertaining as it is educational. The Wisdom of Mao: In this collection of essays, China&’s Chairman Mao Tse-Tung explains his interpretation of Marxism-Leninism that became known as Maoism. From examining the root causes of societal shifts to explaining the necessity of guerilla-based revolution, Mao mixes his philosophical positions with the history of the Chinese people.Classics in Chinese Philosophy: An anthology of the most important philosophical texts in Chinese history, from Confucius and the I Ching to Mao Tse-Tung and Yu-Lan Fung.By China Miéville, Lily Tuck, Joyce Carol Oates, Russell Banks, Ann Lauterbach. 2015
New takes on nature by award-winning poets and writers, from Russell Banks to Lily Tuck and many more. In Natural…
Causes, a provocative collection of radical reinventions of the genre of nature writing, we encounter shrimp farms and spoonbills, maize husks and Austrian woods, tarantulas and eels, multitudinous winds that pollinate or desiccate—nature in all its myriad forms, right down to photons, neutrons, neutrinos, and, yes, even Godzilla, the Sasquatch, and some of nature&’s other fictive and folkloric monsters.By Daniel Alarcon. 2005
Something is happening around the globe: mass movements of peoples, dislocations of language and culture in the wake of war…
and economic crises -- simply put, our world is changing.In this exquisite collection, Daniel Alarcón takes the reader from Third World urban centers to the fault lines that divide nations and people. Wars, both national and internal, are waged in jungles, across borders, in the streets of Lima, in the intimacy of New York apartments. These are lives at the margins of the globalized and not-yet-globalized worlds, the stories of those who shuttle between them and never quite feel at home in the cities where they were born: an unrepentant terrorist remembers where it all began, a would-be emigrant contemplates the ramifications of leaving and never coming back, a reporter turns in his pad and pencil for the inglorious costume of a street clown.War by Candlelight is a devastating portrait ofa world in flux, and Daniel Alarcón is an extraordinary new voice in literary fiction, one you will not soon forget.By John Curran. 2009
A fascinating exploration of the contents of Agatha Christie's seventy-three private notebooks, including illustrations and two unpublished Poirot storiesWhen Agatha…
Christie died in 1976, at age eighty-five, she had become the world's most popular author. With sales of more than two billion copies worldwide, in more than one hundred countries, she had achieved the impossible—more than one book every year since the 1920s, every one a bestseller.So prolific was Agatha Christie's output—sixty-six crime novels, twenty plays, six romance novels under a pseudonym and more than one hundred and fifty short stories—it was often claimed that she had a photographic memory. Was this true? Or did she resort over those fifty-five years to more mundane methods of working out her ingenious crimes?Following the death of Agatha's daughter, Rosalind, at the end of 2004, a remarkable legacy was revealed. Unearthed among her affairs at the family home of Greenway were Agatha Christie's private notebooks, seventy-three handwritten volumes of notes, lists and drafts outlining all her plans for her many books, plays and stories. Buried in this treasure trove, all in her unmistakable handwriting, are revelations about her famous books that will fascinate anyone who has ever read or watched an Agatha Christie story.How did the infamous twist in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd really come about? Which very famous Poirot novel started life as an adventure for Miss Marple? Which books were designed to have completely differ-ent endings, and what were they? What were the plot ideas that she considered but rejected?Full of details she was too modest to reveal in her own autobiography, this remarkable new book includes a wealth of excerpts and pages reproduced directly from the notebooks and her letters, plus, for the first time, two newly discovered complete Hercule Poirot short stories never before published.By Christopher Golden. 2014
Charlaine Harris and Rachel Caine enter a shadowy world of demons and angels in "Dark Witness" while Sarah Rees Brennan,…
Cassandra Clare, and Holly Black look at three weird sisters who face challenges beyond magic in "Sisters Before Misters." Sarah MacLean and Carrie Ryan explore the exquisite agony of eternal love in "She, Doomed Girl," and "Welded" by Tom Piccirilli and T. M. Wright offers an unsettling vision of an evil that infects and destroys lives. Mixing the ordinary—parents, teenagers, lovers—with the extraordinary—angels, demons, serial killers—these captivating and vivid tales delve deep into the shadowy, unexplored realms of the imagination.By Diane Cook. 2014
A refreshingly imaginative, daring debut collection of stories that illuminates with audacious wit the complexity of human behavior, and the…
veneer of civilization over our darkest urges.Told with perfect rhythm and unyielding brutality, these stories expose unsuspecting men and women to the realities of nature, the primal instincts of man, and the dark humor and heartbreak of our struggle to not only thrive, but survive. In "Girl on Girl," a high school freshman goes to disturbing lengths to help an old friend. An insatiable temptress pursues the one man she can't have in "Meteorologist Dave Santana." And in the title story, a long-fraught friendship comes undone when three buddies get impossibly lost on a lake it is impossible to get lost on. Below the quotidian surface of Diane Cook's worlds lurks an unexpected surreality that reveals our most curious, troubling, and bewildering behavior. Other stories explore situations pulled directly from the wild, imposing on human lives the danger, tension, and precariousness of the natural world: a pack of "not-needed" boys takes refuge in a murky forest where they compete against one another for their next meal; an alpha male is pursued through city streets by murderous rivals and desirous women; helpless newborns are snatched from their suburban yards by a man who stalks them. Through these characters Cook asks: What is at the root of our most heartless, selfish impulses? Why are people drawn together in such messy, needful ways? When the unexpected intrudes upon the routine, what do we discover about ourselves? As entertaining as it is dangerous, this accomplished collection explores the boundary between the wild and the civilized, where nature acts as a catalyst for human drama and lays bare our vulnerabilities, fears, and desires.By Jason Wilson. 2017
&“The Best American Travel Writing has been the gold standard for short-form travel writing from newspapers, magazines, and the Internet…
since its inception.&” —New York Times Book Review Everyone travels for different reasons, but whatever those reasons are, one thing is certain—they come back with stories. Each year, the best of those stories are collected in The Best American Travel Writing, curated by one of the top writers in the field, and each year they &“open a window onto the strange, seedy and beautiful world, offering readers glimpses into places that many will never see or experience except through the eyes and words of these writers" (Kirkus Reviews). This far-ranging collection of top notch travel writing is, quite simply, the genre&’s gold standard.By Cheryl Strayed, Jason Wilson. 2018
Everyone travels for different reasons, but whatever those reasons are, one thing is certain: they come back with stories. Each…
year, the best of those stories are collected in The Best American Travel Writing, curated by one of the top writers in the field, and each year they &“open a window onto the strange, seedy, and beautiful world, offering readers glimpses into places that many will never see or experience except through the eyes and words of these writers&” (Kirkus). This far-ranging collection of top notch travel writing is, quite simply, the genre&’s gold standard.By 826 National. 2017
&“Turning the pages of The Best American Nonrequired Reading to find Tweets or sheet music creates the kind of unexpected surprise that's…
often encountered in digital space, but seldom in print…The eclecticism of the sources can be an awakening for the reader who seeks the best writing in books and literary journals…[and] the variety of genres is an apt reflection of contemporary reading culture: not just paragraphs and chapters but expressions in so many different forms…The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2017 lead[s] the reader to a variety of launching points for thinking more about who and where we are."—PopMatters —A book as effervescent and alive as the city itself.My First New York features candid accounts of coming to New…
York by more than fifty of the most remarkable people who have called the city home. Here are true stories of long nights out and wild nights in, of first dates and lost loves, of memorable meals and miserable jobs, of slow walks up Broadway and fast subway rides downtown.The contributors—a mix of actors, artists, comedians, entrepreneurs, musicians, politicians, sports stars, writers, and others—reflect an enormous variety of experiences: few have arrived with less than filmmaker Jonas Mekas, a concentration-camp survivor on a UN refugee ship; few have swanned in with more than designer Diane von Furstenberg, a princess. And an extraordinary number managed to land in New York just as something historic was happening—the artist Cindy Sherman arrived in the middle of the Summer of Sam; restaurateur Danny Meyer came on the day John Lennon was shot.Arranged chronologically, these moving and memorable stories combine to form an impressionistic history of New York since the Great Depression. They also provide an accidental encyclopedia of New York hotspots through the ages: from the Cedar Tavern and the Gaslight to Lutèce and Elaine's, from Max's Kansas City and the Mudd Club to the Odeon and Bungalow 8, they're all here, dots on the unbroken line of the Next Next things.Taken together, My First New York is a collection of fifty-six testaments to a larger revelation, one that new arrivals of all stripes and all eras have experienced again and again in New York, regardless of how the city proceeds to treat them: what the songwriter Rufus Wain-wright calls "having cracked the code of living life to the fullest."By Deborah Eisenberg. 2018
“[Eisenberg] reminds us in every line of certain saving virtues: wit, wild intelligence, great heart, the beauty of the inquiring…
human voice. If our culture can produce a writer this wonderful, there must be something beautiful about us yet.” — George SaundersInstead of forcing her characters’ stories into neat, arbitrary, preordained shapes, [Eisenberg] allows them to grow organically into oddly shaped, asymmetrical narratives—narratives that possess all the surprising twists and dismaying turns of real life.” — New York Times“Deborah Eisenberg, one of America’s finest writers, offers new ways of seeing and feeling, as if something were being perfected at the core.” — San Francisco Chronicle“Reading [Eisenberg] makes you wish, as you study the family in front of you in the grocery line, that you could see their thoughts rendered as one of Eisenberg’s stunning inner monologues.” — Los Angeles Times“...[S]uperlative and entertaining...Eisenberg is funny, grim, biting, and wise, but always with a light touch and always in the service of worlds that extend far beyond the page. A virtuoso at rendering the flickering gestures by which people simultaneously hide and reveal themselves, Eisenberg is an undisputed master of the short story.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)“[Eisenberg] is always worth the wait...so instantly absorbing that it feels like an abduction...This book offers no palliatives to its characters or to its readers — no plan of action. But it is a compass.” — The New York Times“Eisenberg is a gorgeous writer...I thank my stars that there’s a writer in the increasingly imperiled world as smart and funny and blazingly moral and devastatingly sidelong as she is.” — New York Times Book Review“Every character is memorable, every situation seizes our attention, and not a single word is out of place...It’s my fervent hope...that someday we’ll have the opportunity to look back on the many more stories that Deborah Eisenberg has yet to write.” — Financial TimesBy Bonnie Friedman. 1993
Writing Past Dark charts the emotional side of the writer's life. It is a writing companion to reach for when…
you feel lost and want to regain access to the memories, images, and the ideas inside you that are the fuel of strong writing. Combining personal narrative and other writers' experiences, Friedman explores a whole array of emotions and dilemmas writers face—envy, distraction, guilt, and writer's block—and shares the clues that can set you free. Supportive, intimate, and reflective, Writing Past Dark is a comfort and resource for all writers.By Sachin Ketkar, Keerti Ramachandra. 2024
Vyankatesh Madgulkar (1927–2001) was one of the pioneers of modernist short fiction (nav katha) as well as ‘rural’ (grameen) fiction…
in Marathi in the post-World War II era. He wrote eight novels, two hundred short stories, several plays, including some notable ‘folk plays’ (loknatya), screenplays and dialogues for more than eighty Marathi films. This book offers a comprehensive understanding of Vyankatesh Madgulkar’s work by analysing selections from his major creative fictions and nonfictions. This is augmented with important writings on him by his contemporaries, as well as critical writings, commentaries and reviews by present-day scholars. It situates Madgulkar in the context of Marathi literary tradition and Indian literature in general.Part of the Writer in Context series, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of Indian literature, Marathi literature, English literature, comparative literature, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, global south studies and translation studies.By Leila Guerriero. 2017
“[An] anthology of stupendously astute essays...Guerriero’s meticulously curated dozen essays offers an irresistibly beckoning window onto a nation just 90…
miles from American shores, though far away in practice and culture.” — Booklist (starred review)“...This anthology captures much of the broad, surreal spectrum of experience possible on the world’s most complex and controversial island.” — Alex Mar, author of Witches of America“These essays speak to and against one another, they cannot be politically aligned, and that is all as it should be - but what unites them is brilliant writing, a depth of intelligence, and a desire to pull us down from fantastic abstractions to the level of the human.” — Justin Torres, author of We the Animals“[A] fascinating anthology . . . Not quite a travelogue, this appealing volume will nevertheless satisfy any Americans wanting to be transported into the lives and experiences of real Cubans.” — Publishers Weekly“This fascinating collection of essays explores Cuba’s modern transformation, tackling topics from politics to music to baseball. You’ll find yourself both informed and entertained.” — Paste Magazine“[An] excellent new anthology.” — New York Review of BooksBy Pete Dexter. 2007
“[A] literary feat—when Dexter gets going he crawls under the skin and stays there.” — New York Times Book Review[Dexter’s…
pieces] read like finely honed short stories....Their spare, haunting scenes echo Hemingway, their insights Faulkner. — Cleveland Plain DealerPAPER TRAILS is what great newspaper writing is all about. — Washington Post Book World“Pete Dexter is a master story teller in all forms... This is the work of a great American writer.” — Michael Connelly“A jewel box of muscular writing…” — Denver PostSuperb...Remarkable...The simple clarity of [Dexter’s] prose is like an Edward Hopper painting. — New York SunWith authority and a strange grace, Dexter has crafted a powerful true portrait of the underbelly of the American Dream. — Publishers Weekly (starred review)“Lovers of fine writing ought to give a serious consideration to Pete Dexter’s new book.” — Seattle Post-Intelligencer“Paper Trails is a master class in tight, effective writing.” — St. Petersburg Times“The author’s true eye for detail makes for easy reading.” — Kirkus Reviews“Laugh-out-loud stories…Ideal for... writers and any book lover who appreciates a good story.” — Library Journal“Compact and illuminating…” — Sunday Oregonian“Paper Trails will stir nostalgia for those who remember a time when newspapers prided themselves on cutting loose, colorful writers…” — Columbus Dispatch“A book full of good reading…” — Rocky Mountain NewsBy Edan Lepucki, 826 National. 2019
An eclectic collection of fiction, essays, poetry, and graphic work selected by high school students with the help of New…
York Times best-selling author Edan Lepucki. Over the past year, a group of high school students have held weekly discussions in the basement conference room of a publishing house in San Francisco. Tasked with finding the best, most revealing, honest, and astonishing writing of the last twelve months, they pored over hundreds of published poems, stories, comics, and essays. With the help of guest editor Edan Lepucki, they selected the contents of this anthology, a collection of work they feel looks a lot like 2019. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019 features comics about war and butts and stories about pizza-delivery women, family, dolls giving birth, anthropomorphic lakes, and more. It was a successful year. Read on to see for yourself. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019 includes Viet Thanh Nguyen, Charles Johnson, Robin Coste Lewis, Garth Greenwell, Nathaniel Russell, Britteney Black Rose Kapri, Andrea Long Chu, Deborah Taffa, Renée Branum, and others.