Writes of Passage: Coming-of-Age Stories and Memoirs from The Hudson Review

by Paula Deitz (Editor), Dean Flower (Introduction)

Overview

Writes of Passage captures the essence of a universal human experience in literature that has enticed generations of readers: that moment in both fictional and real life when innocence and naiveté evolve into an understanding of the world's greater moral complexity. Collected from the last twenty-five years of The Hudson Review, the stories and memoirs in this book, by both emerging writers and established storytellers like Elizabeth Spencer, William Trevor, and Tennessee Williams, were first published in the literary quarterly based on their own merits, without regard to a developing genre. The editors of The Hudson Review became aware of a unifying theme through the magazine's Writers in the Schools program, which brought many of these works to students in two Harlem high schools.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781566637817
Publisher:	Dee, Ivan R. Publisher
Publication date:	04/02/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.39(w) x 9.35(h) x 1.38(d)

About the Author

Paula Deitz has been the editor of The Hudson Review since 1998. Dean Flower is professor of English Language and Literature at Smith College and an advisory editor for The Hudson Review.

Table of Contents

Foreword   Paula Deitz     xi
Introduction   Dean Flower     xiii
In Co. Cork (memoir)   William Trevor     3
Northeast Philly Girls (story)   Elise Juska     7
Learning to Smoke (story)   Kermit Moyer     19
Lady of Spain (story)   Robert Love Taylor     28
Hat Check Noir (memoir)   Jocelyn Bartkevicius     44
Willie (memoir)   Jacqueline W. Brown     62
Summer's Lease (story)   James Wallenstein     79
Driver's Education (story)   Paula Whyman     95
Newark Job (story)   John Van Kirk     108
The Color of Wheat in Winter (story)   Jan Ellison     122
Tight Jeans (memoir)   Nicole Graev     135
Intelligence, Anyone? (memoir)   Hayden Carruth     144
May Prescott (story)   Randolph Thomas     148
Sightings (story)   Elizabeth Spencer     162
The Rub of the Green (story)   William Hallberg     172
In the Penny Arcade (story)   Steven Millhauser     187
Shelter the Pilgrim (story)   Fred Licht     195
Porrock (memoir)   Mairi MacInnes     210
In Spain There Was Revolution (story)   Tennessee Williams     223
Spain, 1948 (memoir)   Barbara Wasserman     229
Sleet (story)   Steve Yarbrough     247
What Went Wrong (story)   Liza Kleinman     259
My '49 Ford (story)   Peter Makuck     273
Hardball (memoir)   Robert Schultz     285
Good Times (story)   Dena Seidel     290
Ramblers and Spinners (story)   Carl Wooton     305
Pneumonia (story)   Julie Keith     324
Her Gorgeous Grief (story)   Catherine Harnett     341
In the Meantime (memoir)   John McCormick     348
The Secret Sister (memoir)   Andrew Hudgins     358
The Hurt Man (story)   Wendell Berry     373
Copyrights and Credits     381
Notes on the Contributors     383

What People are Saying About This

Afonso S. Albergaria Jr

"The Writes of Passage should be a required anthology for all high school students. The stories inside this precious book will get teachers and students thinking, speaking, and feeling."--(Afonso S. Albergaria Jr., English teacher, The Young Women's Leadership School of East Harlem, New York)

Saul Williams

"I have benefited greatly from the personal stories of artists I admire. They have provided me with maps to measure against my own conquests. Here is a book aimed at the very thing I aim to measure: the process of triumph."--(Saul Williams, slam poet, actor, and author of The Dead Emcee Scrolls: The Lost Teachings of Hip Hop and Said the Shotgun to the Head)

Lily Tuck

"These are wonderful stories for all ages--coming or going."--(Lily Tuck, author of News from Paraguay, National Book Award winner)

Editorial Reviews

Its many artful individual selections....will offer satisfactions and revelations to readers of all ages.

Booklist - Michael Cart

Innocence lost: That is the theme uniting the pieces collected in Writes of Passage: Coming-of-Age Stories and Memoirs from The Hudson Review…But-and this is what makes this book unique-the idea for Writes of Passage didn't originate in a desire to simply showcase the talent that has visited its pages over the years. This collection originated in a program at two Harlem high schools where The Hudson Review ran a Writers in the Schools program.

|Los Angeles Times

Readers who pick up Writes of Passage are in for a treat: the best writing they’ve seen in a long time, and tales they’ll remember for years.

The Hudson Review - Susan Balee

I have benefited greatly from the personal stories of artists I admire. They have provided me with maps to measure against my own conquests. Here is a book aimed at the very thing I aim to measure: the process of triumph.

Saul Williams

It is truly gift that these wonderful short stories and memoirs have been complied in this book. I can speak from experience that these works can motivate and inspire students to see literature in personal, interesting, and fun way. Elise Juska's 'Northeast Pilly Girls,' Jacqueline W. Brown's 'Willie,' Paula Whyman's 'Driver's Education,' and Jan Ellison's 'The Color of Wheat in Winter' are permanent part of curriculum. These beautifully crafted and moving stories speak volumes to my students year after year. I have been fortunate enough to have been working with Paula Deitz and the inspiring The Hudson Review's Writers in Schools Program for six years. My students have benefited tremendously from the intelligent and thought-provoking writers and poets who have visited our classroom. Students have not only read and studied cutting edge and age appropriate works from The Hudson Review, but they have had the privilege of personally meeting these writers. I have witnessed the excitement that each visit has generated; students have been touched by the these stories and memoirs in Writes of Passage—they see their own lives, their dreams, and their immediate concerns in these timely works. It is truly amazing and heartwarming (for me as a teacher) to see New York City public school students actively read a short story or a memoir from one of the nation's most prestigious literary magazines, enthusiastically study and discuss the literary work in class, and then actually meet the author. This is truly a learning experience. The Writes of Passage should be a required anthology for all high school students. The stories inside this precious book will get teachers and students thinking, speaking, and feeling.

Afonso S. Albergaria Jr.

These are wonderful stories for all ages—coming or going.

Lily Tuck

Innocence lost: That is the theme uniting the pieces collected in Writes of Passage: Coming-of-Age Stories and Memoirs from The Hudson Review…But-and this is what makes this book unique-the idea for Writes of Passage didn't originate in a desire to simply showcase the talent that has visited its pages over the years. This collection originated in a program at two Harlem high schools where The Hudson Review ran a Writers in the Schools program.

Los Angeles Times

Its many artful individual selections....will offer satisfactions and revelations to readers of all ages.
— Michael Cart

Booklist

Innocence lost: That is the theme uniting the pieces collected in Writes of Passage: Coming-of-Age Stories and Memoirs from The Hudson Review…But-and this is what makes this book unique-the idea for Writes of Passage didn't originate in a desire to simply showcase the talent that has visited its pages over the years. This collection originated in a program at two Harlem high schools where The Hudson Review ran a Writers in the Schools program.

Los Angeles Times Jacket Copy Blog

Readers who pick up Writes of Passage are in for a treat: the best writing they’ve seen in a long time, and tales they’ll remember for years.
— Susan Balee

Hudson Review