Diane Williams – författare

"Excitability" collects the best of Diane Williams' bold, often hilarious stories of love, sex, death, and the family.

Famous for her works of "flash fiction" which capture life, love, and contradiction in a single page, Diane Williams continues to forge her own innovative tradition in this new collection. Including over three dozen short stories along with three novellas, Romancer Erector is her boldest collection to date. Here she once again astonishes us with her distinctive voice, detached yet fiercely intimate. As one critic writes: "the effect is original, as if a strange little memory has insinuated itself into the reader's own memory, to remain there...incapable of assimilation." Like intricately wrapped gifts, these tales deliver the hidden, the haunted, the charms, the bell, the mansions inside of the human heart.

Consisting of a series of essays written by storytellers who work in the classroom, as well as teachers who use storytelling in the classroom, this title addresses specific curriculum areas, and includes practical, easily replicable lesson plans. Also included is a review and explanation of the current research on the value of storytelling in the classroom in teaching the whole brain using the multiple intelligences and the integration of thinking in the left and right brain. It makes valid connections to educational standards in curriculum areas. Topics addressed are from the dual viewpoints of storytellers and educators.The Storytelling Classroom is an inspiring, practical and immediately applicable collection of preK through eighth grade lesson plans by and for teachers and media specialists who use storytelling in the classroom and storytellers who work in the classroom. Each lesson plan is linked to National Standards in Language Arts Social Studies, Math or Science and accompanied by an essay which provides a glimpse of the alchemy that occurs when students, teachers and story are brought together: student engagement, classrooms that are alive with thinking students, LEARNING!

This resource offers a series of grade-appropriate lessons that link storytelling in the classroom with the development of essential language skills.Literacy Development in the Storytelling Classroom shows just how powerful a tool storytelling can be for building vital language skills—not just reading and writing, but speaking, listening, visual literacy, and information literacy as well. It is an exceptionally rich and rewarding resource that helps teachers and tellers work together to focus story time on language development.Moving grade-by-grade from pre-K to middle school, Literacy Development in the Storytelling Classroom offers both research-based ideas and specific lesson plans for using storytelling to promote literacy learning. Lessons seamlessly integrate material from traditional domains of social studies, science, math, and language arts, while incorporating elements from the creative arts, such as music, visual arts, drama, dance, and folk crafts as both storytelling vehicles and curriculum extensions. The stories themselves in this collection are drawn from the full spectrum of the world’s cultures—every child is represented, and every child will benefit from the concepts and lessons in this remarkable book.Specific lesson plans for each level from pre-K to 5th gradeContributions from a variety of professional educational storytellers and teachers who use storytelling in their classroomsPhotographs of children engaged in storytelling lessons as well as original children’s art and additional diagrams and chartsAn extensive bibliography of print, multimedia, and online resources on both the theoretical basis and practical applications of classroom storytellingAn appendix of national standards and abbreviations

‘The writer who saved my life — or my soul.’ Merve Emre, The New Yorker‘A true living hero of the American avant-garde.’ Jonathan Franzen‘One of the very few contemporary prose writers who seem to be doing something independent, energetic, heartfelt.’ Lydia DavisA new collection of stories from the ‘godmother of flash fiction’ (The Paris Review).In Williams’ stories, life is newly alive and dangerous; whether she is writing about an affair, a request for money, an afternoon in a garden, or the simple act of carrying a cake from one room to the next, she offers us beautiful and unsettling new ways of seeing everyday life.In perfectly honed sentences, with a sly and occasionally wild wit, Williams shows us how any moment of any day can open onto disappointment, pleasure, and possibility.