Browse A-Z Authors: Ea-Eg

The Memory Keeper's Daughter is a brilliantly crafted novel of parallel lives, familial secrets, and the redemptive power of love. Kim Edwards's stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964 in Lexington, Kentucky, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Down syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect Norah, his wife, he makes a split second decision that will alter all of their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child herself. So begins this beautifully told story that unfolds over a quarter of a century--in which these two families, ignorant of each other, are yet bound by the fateful decision made that winter night long ago. A family drama, The Memory Keeper's Daughter explores every mother's silent fear: What would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without you? It is also an astonishing tale of love and how the mysterious ties that hold a family together help us survive the heartache that occurs when long-buried secrets are finally uncovered.

Imbued with all the lyricism, compassion, and suspense of her bestselling novel, The Memory Keeper's Daughter, Kim Edwards's The Lake of Dreams is a powerful family drama and an unforgettable story of love lost and found. Lucy Jarrett is at a crossroads in her life, still haunted by her father's unresolved death a decade earlier. She returns to her hometown in Upstate New York, The Lake of Dreams, and, late one night, she cracks the lock of a window seat and discovers a collection of objects. They appear to be idle curiosities, but soon Lucy realizes that she has stumbled across a dark secret from her family's past, one that will radically change her--and the future of her family--forever. The Lake of Dreams will delight those who loved The Memory Keeper's Daughter, as well as fans of Anna Quindlen and Sue Miller.

With The Memory Keeper's Daughter, Kim Edwards touched hearts across the nation. In this, her first collection of stories-now with three new stories added-she explores the lives of those who exist on the fringes of society: a fire-eater, an American and his Korean war bride, Madame Curie's maid, and others. Though their tales vary dramatically, each comes up against the barriers of place and circumstance in the most universal of experiences: the quest to discover and understand the elusive mysteries of love. Transporting readers to exotic locations, this beautiful collection reinforces Edwards's presence as an extraordinarily gifted writer.

Short Stories; 395 pages. Contents: Foreword -- Introduction / Louise Erdrich -- Playing with dynamite / John Updike -- The girl on the plane / Mary Gaitskill -- A real life / Alice Munro -- Silent passengers / Larry Woiwode -- Queen Wintergreen / Alice Fulton -- The man who rowed Christopher Columbus ashore / Harlan Ellison -- Poltergeists / Jane Shapiro -- Red moccasins / Susan Power -- I want to live! / Thom Jones -- Charlotte / Tony Early -- What the thunder said / Janet Peery -- Naked ladies / Antonya Nelson -- Man, woman and boy / Stephen Dixon -- Winter barley / Andrea Lee -- Concerning mold upon the skin, etc. / Joanna Scott -- Pray without ceasing / Wendell Berry -- Gold / Kim Edwards -- Great Barrier Reef / Diane Johnson -- Terrific mother / Lorrie Moore -- The important houses / Mary Gordon -- Contributors' notes -- 100 other distinguished stories of 1992 -- Editorial addresses of American and Canadian magazines publishing short stories.

Poems; 79 pages. covet (kúh-vit)v. tr.: to desire, esp. to desire eagerly, to wish for, long for. As in to covet another's belongings, the ghosts of households and fixtures, their voices or warnings. Ex: she coveted the fine table, the rich furnishings of her neighbor's home. As in to covet the past, a lost year, a lost life or one not lived. Ex: turning the photograph of her parents over in her hand, she imagined their happiness and coveted what might have been. As in to eagerly wish for the health, well-being of one for whom responsibility is given, or a child. Ex: she coveted, above all, happiness for her sons. Or, to want that (i.e. person) which one may not have, desire to possess another. Ex: thou shalt not covet.

Poems; 63 pages. As a writer of drama and short fiction, Edwards' first collection of poetry is influenced by the character sketches of her earlier prose works, while maintaining a strong sense of lyricism. Like her influences, Sharon Olds, Rainer Rilke, and Sylvia Plath, Edwards' poetry derives force from its candor and observational simplicity. A Kentucky native, Edwards continues in the tradition of great pastoral voices such as Robert Frost, drawing from his metaphorical, lyric and structural paradigms. Reading The Farmer's Daughter evokes fields of space, filled with light and soft shadows.

Poems; 99 pages. With The Highwayman's Wife, Lynnell Edwards' fierce and brazen poems breathe new life into well-known myths and tales, giving a new, bold voice to characters such as Medusa and Helen of Troy. Equal parts graceful and audacious, Edwards' poems capture her genuine love of language while maintaining a charming style all their own.

Poems; 21 pages. In this exciting new collection of poems, Lynnell Edwards illuminates the "molten potential, scourging fire" of glassblowing at Flame Run Hot Shop in Louisville, Kentucky. "Through empathy and penetrating observation, Edwards goes deep inside the art of glassmaking. What she brings back in the form of poems is fascinating-she has absorbed and passes on to us the jargon of the guild, as well as the cautions and the glories the "kings of the hot shop" encounter on the way to finished creations. It is a small, self enclosed universe, and Edwards its sympathetic cosmologist. As one might expect, those who work with a substance and tools that can reach temperatures of a thousand degrees are practical folk, possessed of a dark sense of humor. Molten glass is pretty, and can look delicious, "like taffy/ pulled by hook and hand." But injury and failure are only a breath away, and Edwards is quick to add, "mind your tongue/ friend, this is nothing/ you want between your teeth." Kings of the Rock and Roll Hot Shop captures this paradox and more, in poems that entertain even as they bring us close to the heat, beauty, and danger of creation." - Jeffrey Skinner

Hailed as an instant classic when it appeared in 1987, John Egerton's Southern Food captures the flavor and feel of what it has meant for southerners, over the generations, to gather at the table. This book is for reading, for cooking, for eating (in and out), for referring to, for browsing in, and, above all, for enjoying. Egerton first explores southern food in more than 200 restaurants in eleven southern states; he describes their specialties and recounts his conversations with owners, cooks, waiters, and customers. Then, because some of the best southern cooking is done at home, Egerton offers more than 150 regional recipes, including barbecue, spoonbread, muscadine jam, and key lime pie, with informative and amusing information about each one.

In fifty entries--original features and selections previously published in magazines and journals--contributors celebrate the people, places, traditions, and tastes of the American South. In these pages, Nikki Giovanni expresses her admiration for the legendary Edna Lewis, James Villas remembers his friend Craig Claiborne, Rick Bragg thinks back on Thanksgivings at home, Robert Morgan describes the rituals of canning time, and Fred Chappell offers a contrarian's view of iced tea. "Collectively," writes John Egerton, these pieces "buttress our conviction that nothing else the South has to offer to the nation and the world--with the possible exception of its music--is more eternally satisfying, heartwarming, reconciling, and memorable than its food." With the publication of Cornbread Nation, we acknowledge with gratitude the abiding centrality of food in the ongoing life of the South. Contributors include: Colman Andrews; Jim Auchmutey; Roy Blount Jr.; Gene Bourg; Rick Bragg; Fred Chappell; Lolis Eric Elie; Damon Lee Fowler; Nikki Giovanni; Jessica Harris; Karen Hess; Jack Hitt; Ted & Matthew Lee; Ronni Lundy; Robert Morgan; James Villas; Robb Walsh

Although it contains recipes for old-fashioned fried chicken, cream gravy, apple turnovers, and cornbread, this is not your usual country cookbook. It is a sampling of the culinary heritage of nine Appalachian states that celebrates the homegrown fruits of mountain soil and the labors of mountain cooks of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Sohn's love for Appalachian cookery comes across clearly in the chatty text, which includes plenty of intriguing general background and cooking tips. Each of the 300 recipes is rated for difficulty and appended by preparation alternatives for health-conscious cooks. The print is tiny, and the directions appear in running text rather than in the more accessible step-by-step form, but cooks in search of a change of pace will find that an easy trade-off for some adventurous eating opportunities. - Stephanie Zvirin-

A collection of anecdotal narratives on Southern food that range across the cultural landscape from the sea-level Cajun and Creole quarters of Louisiana to the mountain precincts of the Ozarks and Appalachia, and from the ethnic ports of Florida to the landlocked country and soul-food enclaves of the Southern heartland. First published in 1990.

A satirical tale of the fall of a fabled empire.

Non-fiction. 226 pages.

DVD video; approx. 23 minutes. Documentary film. Originally produced in 2007. Eleven African-American first-grade children initiated the desegregation of previously all-white elementary schools in Nashville, Tennessee, on Sept. 9 and 10, 1957. Nashville was one of the first cities in the South to act on the Supreme Court 1954 decision, Brown vs. The Board of Education. The film compares the Nashville story with events that took place the same week at Little Rock (Arkansas) High School. Three of those children, now grown, and their parents discuss the events of those days, including the bombing of the Hattie Cotton school, and the courage required to respond to the Court's landmark decision. The story is told through the use of first-person narratives, and archival photos and footage.--From publisher description. Written and produced by John Egerton, Terrie Lawrence, and Rachel Lawson.

Winner of the 1984 Lillian Smith Award The saga of the Ledfords of Lancaster, Kentucky, Generations transcends family biography to become a social history of our national experience, a metaphor of America. This twentieth anniversary edition brings the Ledfords' remarkable story up to date. Originally published: ©1983. With new afterword.

Biography. Contents: Will Campbell.--James McBride Dabbs.--John Lewis.--Howard (Buck) Kester.--Fannie Lou Hamer.--Lucius H. Pitts and U.W. Clemmon.--Sarah Patton Boyle.--John Howard Griffin.--Billie and De De Pierce.--The South: the same, only different.

Written and edited by John Egerton; with a reminiscence by Robert Penn Warren; period pieces by Wilma Dykeman [and others]; portraits in time by David Wright; a gallery of Nashville commerce, Louise Littleton Davis.

Non-fiction. 127 pages. Written and edited by John Egerton; principally photographed by Dana Thomas.

Non-fiction. 268 pages. Contents: Introduction: a different and familiar place; Race and class in higher education; West Virginia's battle of the books; Alex Haley's Tennessee roots; The trial of Highlander Folk School; The king coal good times blues; A gentlemen's fight in Prince Edward County, Virginia; Heritage of a heavyweight: the ancestry of Muhammad Ali; Claude Pepper's last crusade; Maurice Mays and the Knoxville race riot of 1919; The enduring mystery of James Earl Ray; Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center; Hammond Academy: a rebel yell, fading; The enigma of the South.

The author presents a history of the Southern men and women, Black and white alike, who led the battle for civil rights prior to the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown decision. Received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.

Visionaries of all ages and places have pursued Utopias, dreaming impossible dreams of starting over in new communities fashioned more closely to their ideals. In Visions of Utopia, John Egerton traces the fascinating history of the experimental communities founded by such groups in Tennessee. He focuses in particular on three extraordinary colonies of the 19th century, each of them widely known in its time: Nashoba, and interracial settlement near Memphis in 1825; Rugby, an English cooperative community on the Cumberland Plateau in 1880; and Ruskin, a socialist community in Dickson County in 1894. John Egerton is a native Southerner - A Georgian by birth, a Kentuckian in his childhood and youth, a Floridian during the early 1960's, and a Tennessean since 1965. He is a grandson of one of the English colonists who started the Rugby settlement in 1880. As a journalist and author, he has written articles on a variety of subjects for more than twenty magazines, and has published two books about the South: A Mind to Stay Here (1970) and The Americanization of Dixie (1974).

First published in 1999. In this sequel to Conversations with Kentucky Writers, L. Elisabeth Beattie brings together in-depth interviews with sixteen of the state's premiere wordsmiths. This new volume offers the perspectives of poets, journalists, and scholars as they discuss their views on creativity, the teaching of writing, and the importance of Kentucky in their work. They talk frankly about how and why they do what they do. The writers speak for themselves, and their thoughts come alive on the page. Beattie's interviews reveal the allegiances and alliances among Kentucky writers that have shaped literary trends by bringing together people with shared interests, values, subjects, and styles. The interviewees include authors who are captivated in other writers and in what they have to say about the process and craft of writing; educators who are interested in Kentucky writers and what their work reveals about the nature of creativity; and historians who are concerned with Kentucky's literary and cultural heritage. The interviews reveal patterns in Kentucky literature from mid-century to the millennium, as authors talk about how their sense of place has changed over the decades and reveal the ways in which the roots of Kentucky writing have produced a literary flowering at the century's end. Includes: Sallie Bingham, Joy Bale Boone, Thomas D. Clark, John Egerton, Sarah Gorham, Lynwood Montell, Maureen Morehead, John Ed Pearce, Ameilia Blossom Pegram, Karen Robards, Jeffrey Skinner, Frederick Smock, Frank Steele, Martha Bennett Stiles, Richard Taylor, and Michael Williams.