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Australian Book Retailer of the Year 2021
Vivian Gornick
In this deeply etched and haunting memoir, Vivian Gornick tells the story of her lifelong battle with her mother for independence.
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Taking readers on a tour of some of the best memoirs and essays of the past hundred years, Gornick traces the changing idea of self that has dominated the century…
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A memoir of self-discovery and the dilemma of connection in our time, The Odd Woman and the City explores the rhythms, chance encounters, and ever-changing friendships of urban life that…
Storm Jameson
After a lifetime of writing a novel every year, Storm Jameson turned to memoir with the ambition 'to write without lying'. The result was an extraordinary reckoning with how she…
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Vivian Gornick, Robert Atwan
A collection of the year's best essays, selected by award-winning writer Vivian Gornick.
Vivian Gornick, renowned essayist and celebrated feminist writer, selects twenty essays out of thousands that represent the…
A series of essays exploring the different books that shaped Gornick throughout her life –
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Eleven classic essays that explore the meaning of love and marriage as literary themes in the twentieth century
Now back in print after its initial publication in 1977 and with a new introduction by the author, [this book] is a landmark work of new journalism, profiling American Communist…
Towards the end of her life, the writer Storm Jameson began her memoir by asking, 'can I make sense of my life?' This question propelled her through an extraordinary reckoning…
One of our most beloved writers reassess the electrifying works of literature that have shaped her life I sometimes think I was born reading … I can’t remember the time…
One of our most vital and incisive writers on literature, feminism, and knowing one’s self
Gornick on V. S. Naipaul, James Baldwin, George Gissing, Randall Jarrell, H. G. Wells, Loren Eiseley, Allen Ginsberg, Hayden Carruth, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth and the intimate relationship between…
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Seven seminal essays addressing loneliness, friendship and feminism, written in Gornick’s inimitable voice, this collection has never been published in Australia.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of the most important leaders of the movement to gain American women the vote, was also a great feminist thinker of the 19th century. Her writing…
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Seminal essays on loneliness, living in New York, friendship, feminism, and writing from a nonfiction master
A vibrant, deeply human portrait of a woman dedicated to fierce protest against the tyranny of institutions over individuals, by the celebrated author
Tells the story of a modern radical who took seriously the idea that inner liberation is the first business of social revolution. This title draws an intimate and insightful portrait…
Anzia Yezierska
In evoking the joy and pain of the Jewish immigrant experience, Anzia Yezierska has no peer. Her stories and novels, written from the 1920s to the 1960s, immortalized the Jews…
Jo Sinclair
Tells the story of Jacob Braunowitz, a young Jewish man who, tortured by self-doubts and nightmare fears, turns his back on his heritage, his home, and even his name. Guided…
Diane Johnson,Vivian Gornick
A classic of alternative biography and feminist writing, this empathetic and witty book gives due to a lesser figure of history, Mary Ellen Peacock Meredith, who was brilliant, unconventional, and…
Mary McCarthy,Vivian Gornick
Story of a group of Americans who seek to escape the perils of present-day life by going to the New England mountains.
Emma Goldman
"A unique re-publication of Emma Goldman's landmark work, Anarchism and Other Essays, with new material and annotations for twenty-first century readers"--
An indispensable volume of immigrant literature.
The author recounts her childhood experiences living in a tenement, looks at her relationship with her mother, and describes the lives of women bound to husbands they do not love.
Jane Taylor McDonnell
Writing is a second chance at life, writes Jane McDonnell. I think all writing constitutes an effort to establish our own meaningfulness, even in the midst of sadness and disappointment…
The past and the truth are slippery things, and the art of nonfiction writing requires the writer to shape as well as explore. In personal essays, meditations on the nature…
Writers of the modern essay can trace their chosen genre all the way back to Michel de Montaigne (1533-92). But save for the recent notable best seller How to Live…
Patrick Madden,Michel Montaigne