It has been lovely to hear from the first readers of Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters, which will come out Aug. 21. Because I had to produce the book so quickly in order to get it published for the 150th anniversary of Little Women on September 29, 2018, very few people had read it before it…
The galleys are here! This is a picture of my copy. As you can see, it says, "Advance Reading Copy / Not for Sale." This is a cheaply produced paperback that goes out to initial readers about six months before the hardcover is on sale in bookstores. (The publication date is August 21.) On the back, it also explains that this is uncorrected…
Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy in Production Copy editing is complete. The illustrations have all been gathered. The layout has been designed. Even though it doesn't come out until next August, between now and then I will be busy helping to usher it into the world. Next month I'll be in New York to participate in a panel at the Modern Language Association convention, and…
I'm really looking forward to this meeting in February and getting a chance to talk about Woolson.
I'm happy to say that my new book on Little Women is in production. The manuscript is in and the copyeditor is hard at work. The cover designers have been working hard as well. I reveal the new cover and title in the latest issue of my newsletter, The Bluestocking Bulletin. Here's a sneak peek: There are also links to the book online and…
That's the tagline for a (relatively) new discussion group I and some other nonfiction authors have started in Facebook. We are calling it Illuminate and hope to shine a light on really great mainstream narrative nonfiction--history, biography, literary studies, cultural studies--particularly, but not exclusively, by or about women. There are great groups out there for fiction lovers, but where are the ones that…
It's the last day of 2016 and so naturally a time to reflect on the year that has been. 2016 was a year of ups and downs, both personally and nationally. But I'll stick here with the personal. (We've all had enough of the national political scene, I'm sure.) 2016 started with the frenzy of promoting my books Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a…
I feel bad that I haven't been blogging as much this year. I've been putting my energies into writing my next book, The Story of Little Women, and keeping in touch with readers via my newsletter, "The Bluestocking Bulletin." I'm happy to say that I am in the final stretch of the rough draft of the manuscript (there will still be lots of revision to come)…
I had a fabulous weekend in San Francisco at the American Literature Association conference (more about that in a moment). The highlight of my trip was getting to see and hold in my hand the letters that Constance Fenimore Woolson wrote to Francis Boott in the late 1880s and early 90s. If you have read the biography, then you know how central her relationship…
It's been almost three weeks in the U.S. since the biography and stories came out. Next week they come out in the UK. In advance of the UK publication, W.W. Norton UK has put up an excerpt of the biography. You can read the prologue and get a sense of the book. (The links there are for UK readers to purchase the…