Toby Olson – författare

A wonderful story of what family means, of the flesh-level pain of sibling rivalry, and the discovery of love. It is a fantastic and beautiful tapestry of some of the most imaginative and precise prose writing going on in America today. Toby Olson stands tall among the handful of writers I most admire and respect.—Richard WileyWrite A Letter to Billy is a delectably complicated maze that kept me spellbound from start to finish. Only the most sophisticated of writers could manage to combine the seriousness of a quest for identity and meaning with the intensity of a thriller, not to mention an excursion into deep-sea diving and the resort life of southern California. Once again, Toby Olson has written a terrific novel full of peril and surprise, offering startling revelations and sudden expansions of the heart and mind."—Lynne Sharon SchwartzUnited with a long-lost teenage daughter, a retired Navy underwater repair specialist investigates a mysterious list his father had written just before his death. Some of the items are crossed off, but one of the unfinished tasks haunts him: "Write letter to Billy." What had his father planned to tell him? What he learns changes his life forever.Influenced by D.H. Lawrence, William Faulkner, and Charles Dickens, Toby Olson’s pointed examination of memory and consciousness illustrates how the unraveling of external mystery leads to self discovery.Toby Olson, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction, has published eight books of fiction and twenty-two books of poetry. His work has appeared in over two hundred newspapers, magazines, and anthologies. Olson’s novels include At Sea, Dorit in Lesbos, Utah, and The Woman Who Escaped from Shame. He lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and North Truro, Massachusetts.

The Bitter Half disrobes the reality of gender, performing a striptease of masks and prosthetic devices, the subtle articulations and miscues of desire. A spit-curl lovingly tucked behind a diamond stud earring, hair brushed pageboy-style, a bibliographic collection of mastectomy scars: Toby Olson's characters swarm with sexual multiplicity, each offering for exhibit a cyclorama of titillating identities. This game of poses, of one self revealed within another, opens in a jail in Depressionera Pearce, Arizona. Chris Pollard, a consultant in the field of prison escapology, has arrived to investigate the case of an inmate who's broken out of every prison in which he has been detained. The two develop an evasive fondness from a distance - an attention to cowlicks and thin lips from between bars. Their relationship remains concealed among levels of identity, Russian Matryoshka dolls, a mystery within a mystery. Revealing their mutual attraction inch-by-inch, ""The Bitter Half"" uncovers a topographical map of seductions, of stratified assumptions and amorphousness. Toby Olson's latest work of fiction is rich in strangeness and erotic delight, a delectation to be enjoyed one layer at a time.

In 2014, Toby Olson's wife Miriam died at the age 80, and after nearly 50 years of marriage. She had suffered from Alzheimer's for some years before her death and Toby became her principal carer. This is a memoir of that period, a story of love and frustration, remembering and forgetting. Miriam is The Other Woman of the title - a woman other than the one she once was. "With each seemingly tiny insignificant detail (his wife's chant "little little little little little little") Olson lets us in to the unfathomable reverberations of his feeling, and I will not soon forget the constellations he has unfolded." - Meredith Quartermain

Death Sentences is Toby Olson's first major collection since Darklight (Shearsman, 2007), and many of the poems herein are addressed to his wife, Miriam, who died, after suffering for years from Alzheimer's disease, in 2014. Many of the other poems, typical of Olson's concerns, stand as celebrations of what is observed, without metaphor or other literary devices intervening. The four series-Death Sentences, I Don't Know, Disturbed and Etudes-are highly structured experiments with the sentence.

Toby Olson began writing poetry while in high school and he continued writing it while in the U.S. Navy, and later as a student at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He received a Master's Degree at Long Island University in New York, after which he taught Creative Writing at Temple University in Philadelphia. His first novel was The Life of Jesus, and this was followed by eleven books of fiction and many books of poetry. He considers himself a poet who also writes fiction, and now, in his mid-eighties, he continues in the writing of both arts.The first books included in this volume were published by Walter Hamady's Perishable Press, and these were followed by books issued by Karl Young's Membrane Press, Barlenmir House, Doctor Generosity's Press, Landlocked Press, Permanent Press, and New Directions. The period covered is 1969-1984.

Toby Olson began writing poetry while in high school and he continued writing it while in the U.S. Navy, and later as a student at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He received a Master's Degree at Long Island University in New York, after which he taught Creative Writing at Temple University in Philadelphia. His first novel was 'The Life of Jesus', and this was followed by eleven books of fiction and many books of poetry. He considers himself a poet who also writes fiction, and now, in his mid-eighties, he continues in the writing of both arts. Though there were poems written in the years between 1983 and 94, most of his efforts in those eleven years were spent writing fiction. Four novels were published in that time, and come 1994 he found he had enough poems for a book, Unfinished Building, and while he continued with fiction, he also found he was writing poetry, and since then he has managed to work at both arts. This volume, including the aforementioned book, contains the collections 'Human Nature' (New Directions), 'Darklight' and 'Death Sentences' (both from Shearman Books), and 'See / Saw', published here for the first time.