American Lives: Memoirs from Literary Greats

Elizabeth Alexander is a poet, essayist, playwright, and teacher. She has published numerous books of poems, including American Sublime, which was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, a young adult collection (co-authored with Marilyn Nelson), Miss Crandall’s School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color, which won a 2008 Connecticut Book Award, and, most recently, Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems: 1990-2010. In her memoir, The Light of the World (Grand Central Publishing), Alexander finds herself at an existential crossroads after the sudden death of her husband. Channeling her poetic sensibilities into a rich, lucid prose, Alexander tells a love story that is, itself, a story of loss. As she reflects on the beauty of her married life, the trauma resulting from her husband's death, and the solace found in caring for her two teenage sons, Alexander universalizes a very personal quest for meaning and acceptance in the wake of loss.

Mary Karr is the author of three award-winning, bestselling memoirs: The Liars' Club, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Cherry, and Lit, which was one of the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Year and a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. A Guggenheim Fellow in poetry, Karr has won Pushcart Prizes for both verse and essays. She is the Peck Professor of Literature at Syracuse University In The Art of Memoir (Harper) Karr synthesizes her expertise as professor and therapy patient, writer and spiritual seeker, recovered alcoholic and “black belt sinner,” providing a unique window into the mechanics and art of memoir that is as irreverent, insightful, and entertaining as her own work in the genre. In their Top 10 Notable Book Citation, New York Times Book Review calls it, “A master class on the art of the memoir.”

From the Chicago neighborhoods where she grew up and set her groundbreaking The House on Mango Street to her abode in Mexico, in a region where, as she writes "my ancestors lived for centuries," the places Sandra Cisneros has lived have provided inspiration for her now-classic works of fiction and poetry. But a house of her own, where she could truly take root, has eluded her. With A House of My Own: Stories from My Life (Knopf) this illustrated collection—spanning nearly three decades, and including never-before-published work—Cisneros has come home at last. Ranging from the private (her parents' loving and tempestuous marriage) to the political (a rallying cry for one woman's liberty in Sarajevo) to the literary (a tribute to Marguerite Duras), and written with her trademark sensitivity and honesty, these poignant, unforgettable pieces give us not only her most transformative memories but also a revelation of her artistic and intellectual influences.