Naomi K. Lewis – författare

One night, Agatha Winter's phone rings. Jasmine, her 13-year-old sister, has run away from home and needs to be picked up at the bus terminal. It's the anniversary of their mother's accident and subsequent split from the family. Jasmine is determined to exact revenge. Their mother, now a flashy self-help guru under a new moniker, preaches "willing amnesia": liberation by deliberately forgetting and disowning the past.But "willing amnesia" is no innovation: it runs in the family. The girls' grandmother and great-grandmother, both Holocaust survivors, have found their own superficially innocuous yet fiercely destructive ways to fend off memory. In separate struggles, the girls work to break free from the burden of their family's silence.Told in three major and two minor voices, Cricket in a Fist offers sophisticated psychological insight. Lewis's rich command of language transports us into a world of richly imagined characters.

"We're not exactly scene-stealers, so you don't hear much from us shy folk-and that's usually how we like it." -Elizabeth Zotova, "My Dear X" The pages of this anthology are filled with personal essays and poems of thoughtful musings, raw memories, and humorous self-examinations by authors and poets who have been labelled by the world-teachers, parents, and peers-as shy. Here, they proudly own up to their shyness, and their message is clear: they don't need to be "cured"! Why should they, when nearly half of North Americans consider themselves shy? Editors Naomi K. Lewis and Rona Altrows have enlisted writers from across the continent and have created a moving anthology that will appeal to all, either because we are shy or because we know someone who is. Contributors: Rona Altrows, Debbie Bateman, Wade Bell, Alex Boyd, Janis Butler Holm, Brian Campbell, Weyman Chan, Lorna Crozier, Mike Duggan, Ben Gelinas, Elizabeth Greene, Vivian Hansen, Elizabeth Haynes, Steven Heighton, Jennifer Houle, I.B. Iskov, Eve S. Krakow, Shawna Lemay, Naomi K. Lewis, Shirley Limbert, Carol L. MacKay, Micheline Maylor, Don McKay, Stuart Ian McKay, Bruce Meyer, Jeff Miller, Dhana Musil, Lori D. Roadhouse, Kerry Ryan, Sydney Sharpe, Natalie Simpson, Sylvia Stopforth, David Van Buren, Aritha van Herk, Russell Wangersky, Cassy Welburn, Madelaine Wong, Elaine Woo, and Elizabeth Zotova.