Kasia Boddy – författare

The short story is one of the most varied and exciting genres in American literature. This collection brings together many of its finest examples from the early nineteenth century to the present. It contains a richly diverse cast of characters, including convicts, artists, farm labourers, slaves, soldiers and salesmen, witches and ghosts, families and lovers. Their stories are told by some of America's most celebrated writers (Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edith Wharton, Raymond Carver) and a few, like Fanny Fern or Charles W. Chestnutt, who may be less familiar. The collection offers a stimulating combination of acknowledged classics, including Mark Twain's hilarious 'Jim Smiley's Jumping Frog' and Edgar Allan Poe's chilling 'The Tell-Tale Heart', and some remarkable pieces that deserve a wider audience, such as Ernest Hemingway's story of miscommunication, 'Out of Season', or Lorrie Moore's tale of modern love and wit, 'Starving Again'.Kasia Boddy's introduction traces the history of the American short story and explores the changes and continuities in its forms and preoccupations. This edition also contains a chronology, explanatory and biographical notes and suggestions for further reading. Table of contentsWashington Irving - The Little Man in Black (1807)Nathaniel Hawthorne - Young Goodman Brown (1835)Edgar Allan Poe - The Tell-Tale Heart (1843)Fanny Fern - Aunt Hetty on Matrimony (1851)Mark Twain - Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog (1865)Joel Chandler Harris - The Tar Baby Story (1880)Mary Wilkins Freeman - Two Friends (1887)Charles W. Chesnutt - The Wife of his Youth (1898)Henry James - The Real Right Thing (1899)Stephen Crane - An Episode of War (1899)O. Henry - Hearts and Hands (1903)Sherwood Anderson - The Untold Lie (1917)Ernest HemingwayOut of Season (1923)Edith Wharton - Atrophy (1927)Dorothy Parker - New York to Detroit (1928)Eudora Welty - The Whistle (1938)William Faulkner - Barn Burning (1939)F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Lost Decade (1939)Zora Neale Hurston - Now You Cookin' with Gas (1942)Bernard Malamud - The First Seven Years (1950)Flannery O'Connor - A Late Encounter with the Enemy (1953)John Updike - Sunday Teasing (1956)John Cheever - Reunion (1962)Grace Paley - Wants (1971)Alice Walker - The Flowers (1973)Donald Barthelme - I Bought a Little City (1974)Raymond Carver - Collectors (1975)Richard Ford - Communist (1985)Lorrie Moore - Starving Again (1990)Jhumpa Lahiri - The Third and Final Continent (1999)Lydia Davis - The Caterpillar (2006)

An evocative and richly illustrated exploration of flowers and how, over the centuries, they have given us so much sustenance, meaning, and pleasure“From the meaning of carnations in Sex and the City to the use of sunflowers in the cleanup of Chernobyl, from Henry VIII’s ban on saffron dye in Ireland to the modernist reinventions of roses, this is no ordinary flower book, and Kasia Boddy is no ordinary writer.”—Ali Smith, author of Spring"Fresh, novel . . . and unclassifiable.”—Publishers WeeklyThe bright yellow of a marigold and the cheerful red of a geranium, the evocative fragrance of a lotus or a saffron-infused paella—there is no end of reasons to love flowers. Ranging through the centuries and across the globe, Kasia Boddy looks at the wealth of floral associations that has been passed down in perfumes, poems, and paintings; in the design of buildings, clothes, and jewelry; in songs, TV shows, and children’s names; and in nearly every religious, social, and political ritual.Exploring the first daffodils of spring and the last chrysanthemums of autumn, this is also a book about seasons. In vibrant detail and drawing on a rich array of illustrations, Boddy considers how the sunflower, poppy, rose, lily—and many others—have given rise to meaning, value, and inspiration throughout history, and why they are integral to so many different cultures.

The American Short Story since 1950 offers a reappraisal and contextualisation of a critically underrated genre during a particularly rich period in its history. It offers new readings of important stories by key writers including Flannery O'Connor, John Cheever, Donald Barthelme, Raymond Carver, Lorrie Moore and Grace Paley. These readings are related throughout to the various contexts in which stories are written and published, including creative writing schools, story-writing handbooks, mass market and 'little' magazines. A long introduction tells the story of the American short story before 1950. The first four chapters are roughly chronological, covering the major trends (such as realism, fabulism and minimalism) in short fiction from the 1950s to 2000. The fifth explores the implications for the short story of its association with creative writing education. The sixth deals with the short story sequence since 1950. A conclusion surveys the state of short fiction today.Key Features*explores a particularly rich period in the history of the short story *offers close-readings of important stories by major writers including Flannery O'Connor, John Cheever, William Gass, Donald Barthelme, Raymond Carver, Denis Johnson, Junot Díaz, Edward P. Jones, Grace Paley, Sherman Alexie, David Foster Wallace, Gish Jen, Lorrie Moore, David Bezmozgis and Lydia Davis* draws on previously unpublished interviews with many of these writers*explores the contexts in which stories are written and published, including story-writing handbooks, mass market and 'little' magazines, creative writing workshops*considers the short story in relation to a variety of literary modes and trends such as realism, metafiction and minimalism, and to other forms, especially the novel and the lyric poem

Reaktion’s new ‘Botanical’ series is the first of its kind, integrating horticultural and botanical writing with a broader account of the cultural and social impact of plants. In that sense, the South African geranium (the enduring, if confusing, common name for the genus Pelargonium) is perhaps the perfect plant to inaugurate the series. The story of the geranium’s inexorable rise encompasses many other historical narratives: from plant hunting to commercial cultivation; from the role of plants in alternative medicine and the philanthropic imagination to changing styles in horticultural fashion.Geraniums were first collected by seventeenth-century Dutch plant hunters on the sandy flats near present-day Cape Town, and before long wealthy collectors and enterprising nurserymen were competing for this latest rarity to grace their hothouses. But the geranium was not destined to be a fashionable exotic for long: scarlet hybrids were soon to be found on every cottage windowsill and in every park bedding display, and the horticultural backlash began. Today geraniums can be found throughout the world, their widespread use in food and perfume manufacture as well as floral display exemplifying the global industrialization of plant production.In Geranium, Kasia Boddy details how the cheerful and amenable geranium remains a plant that many love and others love to hate, but above all it is a flower that is seldom ignored. Featuring numerous fine illustrations, Geranium explores the ever-changing image of the plant as portrayed in painting, literature, film and popular culture worldwide.