Publishing online is a quite an experience for an academic. Last week I published two pieces—one I had written a couple of months ago, the other I had written very recently. The first, a review of recent biographies about J. D. Salinger and Harper Lee at the Los Angeles Review of Books, was part of my larger goal of building a reputation as…
Perhaps I shouldn’t be shocked, but I was when I read the Washington Post’s review of Karen Abbott’s new book, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy, about four women who participated in the Civil War. Jonathan Yardley compares what he sees as the book’s troubling passages to writing “borrowed from the pages of a women’s magazine.” Apparently, women’s magazines are full of writing that he…
My review of Rebecca Mead's My Life in Middlemarch was published last week on Electric Literature's blog, The Outlet. This is my first foray into non-academic reviewing. I had a lot of fun doing it and can't wait to do more. This book was particularly interesting because Woolson was a big fan of George Eliot's. I believe Eliot was her first and most lasting…
I have been reading a lot about how women writers continue to face doubts about their legitimacy, from without and within. (The latest a lengthy interview with a group of women writers.) And I have been reading about how today’s women writers would like to be known simply as writers, despite knowing how unlikely it (still) is that critics and readers will simply…
I am happy to report that my biography of Woolson has found a publisher. Here is the announcement that appeared in Publisher’s Marketplace: Professor at University of New Orleans Anne Boyd Rioux's PORTRAIT OF A LADY NOVELIST, the first biography of Constance Fenimore Woolson, a critically acclaimed 19th century American writer who served as the model for her friend Henry James's "Portrait of…
It hasn't been easy to keep Woolson in my life since I returned to teaching this fall. I've taught her stories "Miss Grief" and "Jeannette" in my American Literature Survey class. But presenting a paper at the South Central Modern Language Association conference here in New Orleans last week gave me the opportunity (or should I say made me make the time) to…
After a year and half off from teaching to write, I am now back in the classroom and find myself morphing from my writer self to that other professional identity: English Professor. I worked so hard for so many years to be a good teacher and successful professor, to get the tenure-track job, to get tenure, to get promotion, to get the scholarly…
Recently, my mom stayed with us so that I could get some writing done. We joked that she would be my “wife” for a week, and she was more or less. She kept the kitchen clean and my daughter fed and occupied while I worked from 6:00 am until lunchtime. When she left, I missed her. Not just because the dishes began to…