Private Voices, Public Lives: Women Speak on the Literary Life - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0929398882 ISBN 13: 9780929398884

Publisher: University of North Texas Press, 1995

Synopsis

Interweaving the personal, private voice with scholarly, public intent, Nelson and the other contributors argue for a more interactive and cooperative approach to the teaching, reading, critiquing, and writing of literature.

These essays are a direct result of the desire by many women within the academic community to break free of what has been called the “masculine” or “adversary” mode of literary criticism.

Private Voices, Public Lives is of critical importance to readers, teachers, reviewers, and critics. The essays incorporate ideas on current issues of autobiography, memoir, women's voice, reader response, diversity, life writing, and gender.

About this title

About the Author:

Nancy Owen Nelson has published articles in several academic journals and anthologies.  She is co-editor of The Selected Letters of Frederick Manfred: 1932-1954 (University of Nebraska Press, 1989) and editor of Private Voices, Public Lives: Women Speak on the Literary Life (1995, University of North Texas Press) and The Lizard Speaks: Essays on the Writings of Frederick Manfred (the Center for Western Studies, 1998).  She has a published poetry in the, What Wildness is this? (University of Texas Press, March 2007) as well as in the South Dakota Review and Graffiti Rag and has creative nonfiction pieces in Mom's Writing Literary Journal (Fall, 2008), Lalitamba journal, and Roll (Telling Our Stories Press, 2013).  She is currently teaching writing in several colleges and a memoir workshop for Springfed Arts (a Detroit literary/music organization).
 
Nelson earned her B.A. in French and English at Birmingham-Southern College and her M.A. and PhD in English at Auburn University.  She taught composition and literature at Auburn University, Augustana College, Albion College, and Henry Ford Community College. For three years she served as Assistant Director of the Hassayampa Institute for Creative Writing at Yavapai College, Prescott, AZ.
 
She is looking for a home for her memoir, Divine Aphasia and writing a memoir on three generations of women in her family, Fighting for a Name.

Review:

Private Voices, Public Lives: Women speak on the Literary Life is a collection of essays arguing for a more interactive and cooperative approach to the teaching, reading, critiquing, and writing of literature. Private Voices, Public Lives is of critical importance to readers, teachers, reviewers and critics. The essays incorporate ideas on current issues of autobiography, women's voice, reader response, diversity,a nd gender. Part I: The Work/Love Paradigm includes essays on Katherine Anne Porter, Willa Cather, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and others. Part II: The Text as Mirror includes essays on Adrienne Rich, Amy Tan, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Kathleen Norris, and others. Part III: Teaching and Writing the Self includes essays on Dr. Benjamin Spock, Virginia Woolf, Hart Crane, and others. Private Voices, Public Lives is one of the most exciting approaches to literary evaluation and assessment to come along in a several decades. -- Midwest Book Review

About this edition

• Publisher: University of North Texas Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0929398882
• ISBN 13: 9780929398884
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 319
• Editor: Nelson Nancy Owen