A Braided Heart


Book Description

An accessible and personable guide to writing creative nonfiction




A Braided Heart


Book Description

A Braided Heart provides a friendly, personal, and smart guide to the writing life. It also offers clear and original instruction on craft elements at the forefront of today’s emerging forms in creative nonfiction: from the short-short, to the braided form, to the hermit crab essay. An acknowledged expert in these forms, Brenda Miller gives writers practical advice on how to sustain and invigorate their writing practice, while also encouraging readers to explore their own writing lives. “Brenda Miller writes so beautifully in these lyrical and ‘braided’ essays—personal meditations that take us deep into the miracle of writing itself. Her eye is always alert, her ear wonderfully tuned to the nuances of perception. The art of the essay is alive and well in her hands.” —Jay Parini, author of Borges and Me




Tell It Slant, Third Edition


Book Description

Publisher's Note: Products purchased from Third Party sellers are not guaranteed by the publisher for quality, authenticity, or access to any online entitlements included with the product. Two award-winning authors reveal everything you need to know to develop your own distinctive voice and craft compelling, creative nonfiction “Tell all the Truth but tell it Slant.” —Emily Dickinson With these words, Dickinson offers sound advice for nonfiction writers: Tell the truth but become more than mere transcribers of daily life. Since 2003, Tell It Slant has set the standard for creative nonfiction instruction, showing writers how to move beyond mere facts and, instead, make the most of their own “slant” on the world. This revised and updated third edition offers: • New and expanded chapters on writing about identity, maintaining a productive work/life balance, and navigating the publishing industry • An anthology with diverse pieces that range from traditional essay to the graphic memoir • Expanded discussion of contemporary and emerging literary forms • New “Try It” writing exercises throughout the book Whether planning a course or learning on your own, Tell It Slant provides everything you need to know to develop a distinctive voice and to craft compelling creative nonfiction. This book provides the basis for a complete education in nonfiction writing, wherever your classroom might be. “Tell It Slant is a valuable and comprehensive resource for nonfiction writers, filled with exhilarating examples, powerful exercises, and pure inspiration. Miller and Paola are gifted teachers and writers with endless wisdom to share and a lovely way of sharing it with struggling writers at every level.” —Dinty W. Moore, author of The Mindful Writer: Noble Truths of the Writing Life




Heart Radical


Book Description

Wanting to understand how her path is tied to her mother tongue, Anne, a young, multiracial American woman, travels through China, the country of her mother’s birth. Along the way, she tries on different roles—seeker, teacher, student, girlfriend, artist, and daughter—and continually asks herself: Why do I feel called to make this journey? Whether witnessing a Tibetan sky burial, teaching English at a university in Chengdu, visiting her grandmother in LA, or falling in love with a Chinese painter, Anne is always in pursuit of intimacy with others, even as she is all too aware of her silences and separation. For two years, she settles into a comfortable routine in her boyfriend’s apartment and regains fluency in Chinese, a language she spoke as a young child but has used less and less as an adult. Eventually, however, her desire to know herself in other ways surfaces again. She misses speaking English, she feels suffocated by urban, polluted China, and she starts to fall for another man. Ultimately, Anne realizes that to live her truth as a mixed-race, bilingual woman she must embrace all of her influences and layers. In a world that often wants us to choose a side or fit an ideal, she learns that she can both belong and not belong wherever she is, and that home is ultimately found within.




Braided


Book Description

What if you could bake bread once a week, every week? What if the smell of fresh bread could turn your house into a home? And what if the act of making the bread―mixing and kneading, watching and waiting―could heal your heartache and your emptiness, your sense of being overwhelmed? It can. This is the surprise that physician-mother Beth Ricanati learned when she started baking challah: that simply stopping and baking bread was the best medicine she could prescribe in a fast-paced world. 2018 National Jewish Book Award Finalist 2018 Foreword INDIES Winner 2019 Readers' Favorite Awards Finalist 2019 Wilbur Award, Nonfiction Winner 2020 Eric Hoffer Award, First Horizon Award Finalist 2020 Eric Hoffer Award, 1st runner up in Nonfiction 2020 Eric Hoffer Award, Grand Prize Shortlist Finalist 2020 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Finalist 2020 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Winner




The Braided Rug Book


Book Description

The classic guide to an enduring American craft gets an eye-catching revision. Fantastic to look at and easy to follow, this expanded version of The Braided Rug Book will win a new audience and also appeal to those who own the previous edition. It features thoroughly updated information, brand-new gallery images, two additional rug techniques to try, and a comprehensive primer on planning a project. Beginners will learn about wools and other materials, how to care for finished rugs, and how to recognize a quality rug. Plus, there are several new color plans and entirely new directions and illustrations for building a rug-braiding stand, complete with a finished photo.




Badass Braids


Book Description

Recreate the braids, buns, and twists of your favorite historical, sci-fi, and fantasy heroes and heroines with Badass Braids. Step-by-step, illustrated instructions will show you how to make the hairstyles from Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games, Star Trek, Star Wars, The Legend of Zelda, Vikings, The Lord of the Rings, and more. When she’s not studying for her PhD in social neuroscience, Silvousplaits (a.k.a. Shannon Burns) is creating and posting weekly instructional videos on her YouTube channel of DIY hair art that mimics the hairstyles of valiant men and women in the best historical, sci-fi, and fantasy shows and movies. In Badass Braids, Shannon shows you how to transform your hair, step by step. The book covers braids and styles from a full spectrum of fantasy worlds (and galaxies), from ancient adversaries and viking warriors to romantic renegades and sci-fi heroines. With an introduction to the styling techniques for different kinds of basic braids, interviews with behind-the-scenes stylists and actors, and original styles inspired by fan-favorites, you will learn to recreate the hairstyles of Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games: Mockingjay), Anne Boleyn (The Tudors), the Norse king Ragnar Lothbrok (Vikings), Daenerys Targaryen (Game of Thrones), and many more. Badass Braids is the perfect gift for geeky men and women of all ages!




The Kosher Baker


Book Description

This extraordinary bible of kosher baking breathes fresh life into parve desserts and breads




Braided Worlds


Book Description

In a compelling mix of literary narrative and ethnography, anthropologist Alma Gottlieb and writer Philip Graham continue the long journey of cultural engagement with the Beng people of Côte d’Ivoire that they first recounted in their award-winning memoir Parallel Worlds. Their commitment over the span of several decades has lent them a rare insight. Braiding their own stories with those of the villagers of Asagbé and Kosangbé, Gottlieb and Graham take turns recounting a host of unexpected dramas with these West African villages, prompting serious questions about the fraught nature of cultural contact. Through events such as a religious leader’s declaration that the authors’ six-year-old son, Nathaniel, is the reincarnation of a revered ancestor, or Graham’s late father being accepted into the Beng afterlife, or the increasing, sometimes dangerous madness of a villager, the authors are forced to reconcile their anthropological and literary gaze with the deepest parts of their personal lives. Along with these intimate dramas, they follow the Beng from times of peace through the times of tragedy that led to Côte d’Ivoire’s recent civil conflicts. From these and many other interweaving narratives—and with the combined strengths of an anthropologist and a literary writer—Braided Worlds examines the impact of postcolonialism, race, and global inequity at the same time that it chronicles a living, breathing village community where two very different worlds meet.




Telephone: Essays in Two Voices


Book Description

Literary Nonfiction. "TELEPHONE is, for me, a stellar example of what can be achieved in collaborative work where two voices figure out how to link connective threads that bring out the best in each of their words, images, and narrative flourishes. This is a real gift of a book, one I hope to keep learning from."--Hanif Abdurraqib "Miller and Wade's TELEPHONE is a polyphonic emergency. These divinely nostalgic and politely oracular essays,--are they essays? watch them essai,--pursue the maximum boundaries of genre, and there, in the peripheries, together, we reach into our pockets to read their decoded message: I love."--Lily Hoang "Wade and Miller's collaborative essay collection, TELEPHONE, stretches the possibilities of the form, creating a kind of thought puzzle that you're happy to never truly solve. Their voices bounce and blend, weave and bob, in a way that seems almost impossible and magical. TELEPHONE is a testament to the power of voice and the beauty of collaborative art."--Steven Church "TELEPHONE is unusual, thoughtful and compelling. The two voices together are clever, passionate, entertaining and intriguing. TELEPHONE pushes the boundaries and demonstrates the power and potential of the creative nonfiction genre."--Lee Gutkind "Miller and Wade's marvelous TELEPHONE takes the ordinary--cars, exercise, toys, sex--and elevates it to the extraordinary. Each subject is subjected to lyrical rendering and astonishing interpretation. TELEPHONE stuns us with its burnished music, its use of form, and its brilliant musings on seemingly quotidian subjects. In these twin-voiced essays is a celebration of narrative's thrall, but also a liberation blueprint that frees us from the tyranny of a single self, a single story."--James Allen Hall