Download or read book Nerd Camp written by Elissa Brent Weissman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-05-22 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For ten-year-old Gabe, the Summer Center for Gifted Enrichment is all that he dreamed it would be, but he must work hard to write about the fun in letters to Zach, his cool future stepbrother, without revealing that it is a camp for "nerds."

Download or read book White Magic written by Elissa Washuta and published by Tin House Books. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the PEN Open Book Award Longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Award A TIME, NPR, New York Public Library, Lit Hub, Book Riot, and Entropy Best Book of the Year "Beguiling and haunting. . . . Washuta's voice sears itself onto the skin." —The New York Times Book Review Bracingly honest and powerfully affecting, White Magic establishes Elissa Washuta as one of our best living essayists. Throughout her life, Elissa Washuta has been surrounded by cheap facsimiles of Native spiritual tools and occult trends, “starter witch kits” of sage, rose quartz, and tarot cards packaged together in paper and plastic. Following a decade of abuse, addiction, PTSD, and heavy-duty drug treatment for a misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder, she felt drawn to the real spirits and powers her dispossessed and discarded ancestors knew, while she undertook necessary work to find love and meaning. In this collection of intertwined essays, she writes about land, heartbreak, and colonization, about life without the escape hatch of intoxication, and about how she became a powerful witch. She interlaces stories from her forebears with cultural artifacts from her own life—Twin Peaks, the Oregon Trail II video game, a Claymation Satan, a YouTube video of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham—to explore questions of cultural inheritance and the particular danger, as a Native woman, of relaxing into romantic love under colonial rule.

Download or read book Motherland written by Elissa Altman and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “I’m reading this book right now and loving it!”—Cheryl Strayed, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wild How can a mother and daughter who love (but don’t always like) each other coexist without driving each other crazy? “Vibrating with emotion, this deeply honest account strikes a chord.”—People “A wry and moving meditation on aging and the different kinds of love between women.”—O: The Oprah Magazine After surviving a traumatic childhood in nineteen-seventies New York and young adulthood living in the shadow of her flamboyant mother, Rita, a makeup-addicted former television singer, Elissa Altman has managed to build a very different life, settling in Connecticut with her wife of nearly twenty years. After much time, therapy, and wine, Elissa is at last in a healthy place, still orbiting around her mother but keeping far enough away to preserve the stable, independent world she has built as a writer and editor. Then Elissa is confronted with the unthinkable: Rita, whose days are spent as a flâneur, traversing Manhattan from the Clinique counters at Bergdorf to Bloomingdale’s and back again, suffers an incapacitating fall, leaving her completely dependent upon her daughter. Now Elissa is forced to finally confront their profound differences, Rita’s yearning for beauty and glamour, her view of the world through her days in the spotlight, and the money that has mysteriously disappeared in the name of preserving youth. To sustain their fragile mother-daughter bond, Elissa must navigate the turbulent waters of their shared lives, the practical challenges of caregiving for someone who refuses to accept it, the tentacles of narcissism, and the mutual, frenetic obsession that has defined their relationship. Motherland is a story that touches every home and every life, mapping the ferocity of maternal love, moral obligation, the choices women make about motherhood, and the possibility of healing. Filled with tenderness, wry irreverence, and unforgettable characters, it is an exploration of what it means to escape from the shackles of the past only to have to face them all over again. Praise for Motherland “Rarely has a mother-daughter relationship been excavated with such honesty. Elissa Altman is a beautiful, big-hearted writer who mines her most central subject: her gorgeous, tempestuous, difficult mother, and the terrain of their shared life. The result is a testament to the power of love and family.”—Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance

Download or read book Iris in the Dark written by Elissa Grossell Dickey and published by Lake Union Publishing. This book was released on 2022-06-07 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A single mother faces her worst fear--the past--in a provocative novel of suspense by the author of The Speed of Light. Iris Jenkins knows that bad things happen. She's tried to escape these things for years. So when Iris is entrusted to house-sit at a lodge on the South Dakota prairie, she thinks she's prepared for anything. But one surprise is Sawyer Jones, the property's neighbor and caretaker. He's a caring, reassuring presence who's making her feel safe and alive again. Then late one night, Iris hears a chilling cry for help coming from a walkie-talkie buried in a box of toys. As the calls get more desperate, personal, and menacing, Iris realizes the person on the other end isn't reaching out for help. They're reaching out to terrorize her. Now the only way for Iris to move forward in life is to confront the past she's been running from...a threat that has now followed her into the dark.

Download or read book In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and Other Stories written by Delmore Schwartz and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 1978 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eight stories portray the world of the New York intellectual during the 1930s and 40s, probing the conflict between ambitious, educated youths and their immigrant parents.

Download or read book Linked written by Imogen Howson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-06-11 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After Elissa's nightmarish visions and inexplicable bruises lead to the discovery of a battered twin sister on the run from government agents, Elissa enlists the help of an arrogant new graduate from the space academy.

Download or read book The Writer s Notebook II written by Christopher Beha and published by Tin House Books. This book was released on 2012-10-23 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Writer's Notebook II offers aspiring authors sixteen insightful essays about the craft of writing by Tin House authors and summer workshop faculty members, including Aimee Bender, Steve Almond, Maggie Nelson, Karen Russell, Benjamin Percy, and others. The Writer's Notebook II continues in the tradition of The Writer's Notebook, featuring essays based on craft seminars from the Tin House Summer Writer's Workshop, as well as a variety of craft essays from Tin House magazine contributors and Tin House Books authors. The collection includes essays that not only examine important craft aspects such as humor, suspense, and research but that also explore creating fractured and nonrealist narratives and the role of dream in fiction. An engaging and enlightening read, The Writer's Notebook II is both a toolkit and an inspiration for any writer. The Writer’s Notebook II offers aspiring authors sixteen insightful essays about the craft of writing by Tin House authors and summer workshop faculty members, including Aimee Bender, Steve Almond, Maggie Nelson, Karen Russell, Benjamin Percy, and others.

Download or read book The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes written by Elissa R. Sloan and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes is a page-turning peek inside the glamour and brutality of life as a pop star. Sloan takes us on a wild ride through the world of music video shoots, expensive hotels, and arena tours—showing us the darkness that threatens just below the surface.” —Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Jones and The Six “I didn't know I was waiting for a smart, literary writer to craft a novel about the rise and fall of a teen star akin to Britney Spears until I discovered The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes. A witty, bright, hilarious—and at times devastating—read. I loved it." —Amanda Eyre Ward, New York Times bestselling author of The Jetsetters Cassidy Holmes isn't just a celebrity. She is “Sassy Gloss,” the fourth member of the hottest pop group America has ever seen. Hotter than Britney dancing with a snake, hotter than Christina getting dirrty, Gloss was the pop act that everyone idolized. Fans couldn't get enough of them, their music, and the drama that followed them like moths to a flame—until the group’s sudden implosion in 2002. And at the center of it all was Sassy Cassy, the Texan with a signature smirk that had everyone falling for her. But now she's dead. Suicide. The world is reeling from this unexpected news, but no one is more shocked than the three remaining Glossies. Fifteen years ago, Rose, Merry, and Yumi had been the closest to Cassidy, and this loss is hitting them hard. Before the group split, they each had a special bond with Cassidy—truths they told, secrets they shared. But after years apart, each of them is wondering: what could they have done? Told in multiple perspectives—including Cassidy herself—and different timelines, this is a behind-the-scenes look into the rise and fall of a pop icon, and a penetrating examination of the dark side of celebrity and the industry that profits from it.

Download or read book American Daughter written by Stephanie Plymale and published by Greenleaf Book Group. This book was released on 2020-02-11 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "American Daughter–in the tradition of classics like The Glass Castle, LA Diaries and White Oleander–explores in unsparing details the complex interplay between intimate family ties, generational abuse and cataclysmic losses." – Gina Frangello, Author of ‘Every Kind of Wanting’ and ‘A Life in Men’ Editor of The Coachella Review For 50 years, Stephanie Thornton Plymale kept her past a fiercely guarded secret. No one outside her immediate family would ever have guessed that her childhood was fraught with every imaginable hardship: a mentally ill mother who was in and out of jails and psych wards throughout Stephanie's formative years, neglect, hunger, poverty, homelessness, truancy, foster homes, a harrowing lack of medical care, and ongoing sexual abuse. Stephanie, in turn, knew very little about the past of her mother, from whom she remained estranged during most of her adult life. All this changed with a phone call that set a journey of discovery in motion, leading to a series of shocking revelations that forced Stephanie to revise the meaning of almost every aspect of her very compromised childhood. ​American Daughter is at once the deeply moving memoir of a troubled mother-daughter relationship and a meditation on trauma, resilience, transcendence, and redemption. Stephanie's story is unique but its messages are universal, offering insight into what it means to survive, to rise above, to heal, and to forgive.

Download or read book Blueprints for Building Better Girls written by Elissa Schappell and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-07-10 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elissa Schappell, “a diva of the encapsulating phrase, capable of conveying a Pandora’s box of feeling in a single line” (The New York Times Book Review) delivers eight provocative, darkly funny linked stories that map America’s shifting cultural landscape from the late 1970s to the present day. Blueprints for Building Better Girls delves into the lives of an eclectic cast of archetypal female characters—from the high school slut to the good girl, the struggling artist to the college party girl, the wife who yearns for a child to the reluctant mother—mapping America’s shifting cultural landscape from the late 1970s to the present day. Its interconnected stories explore the commonly shared but rarely spoken of experiences that build girls into women and women into wives and mothers. In revealing all their vulnerabilities and twisting our preconceived notions of who they are, Elissa Schappell alters how we think about the nature of female identity and how it evolves.

Download or read book The Extraordinary UnOrdinary You written by Simone Knego and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Do you wake up every day feeling like you're going through the motions, that the hundreds of choices you make have almost no impact on the people around you? Many motivational books will tell you that in order to better the world, you must first better yourself. But you really only need to change the way you see yourself and the world around you will change."--Amazon.com

Download or read book A Mathematician s Lament written by Paul Lockhart and published by Bellevue Literary Press. This book was released on 2009-04-01 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of the best critiques of current mathematics education I have ever seen.”—Keith Devlin, math columnist on NPR’s Morning Edition A brilliant research mathematician who has devoted his career to teaching kids reveals math to be creative and beautiful and rejects standard anxiety-producing teaching methods. Witty and accessible, Paul Lockhart’s controversial approach will provoke spirited debate among educators and parents alike and it will alter the way we think about math forever. Paul Lockhart, has taught mathematics at Brown University and UC Santa Cruz. Since 2000, he has dedicated himself to K-12 level students at St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn, New York.

Download or read book The Renegade Reporters written by Elissa Brent Weissman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-08-10 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Ash gets kicked off her school's news show, she becomes a renegade reporter--and makes a big discovery about technology and her fellow students' privacy. Ash and her friends are reporters. They were ready to lead their school news show, The News at Nine, sponsored by Van Ness Media, when an unfortunate incident involving a dancing teacher, an irresponsibly reported story, and a viral video got them kicked off the crew. So Ash, Maya, and Brielle decide to start their own news show, The Underground News. And soon they stumble on a big lead: Van Ness Media, the educational company that provides their school's software, has been gathering data from all the kids at school. Their drawings, their journals, even their movements are being recorded and cataloged by Van Ness Media. But why? Ash and her friends are determined to learn the truth and report it.

Download or read book Shapes of Native Nonfiction written by Elissa Washuta and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2019-06-28 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just as a basket’s purpose determines its materials, weave, and shape, so too is the purpose of the essay related to its material, weave, and shape. Editors Elissa Washuta and Theresa Warburton ground this anthology of essays by Native writers in the formal art of basket weaving. Using weaving techniques such as coiling and plaiting as organizing themes, the editors have curated an exciting collection of imaginative, world-making lyric essays by twenty-seven contemporary Native writers from tribal nations across Turtle Island into a well-crafted basket. Shapes of Native Nonfiction features a dynamic combination of established and emerging Native writers, including Stephen Graham Jones, Deborah Miranda, Terese Marie Mailhot, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Eden Robinson, and Kim TallBear. Their ambitious, creative, and visionary work with genre and form demonstrate the slippery, shape-changing possibilities of Native stories. Considered together, they offer responses to broader questions of materiality, orality, spatiality, and temporality that continue to animate the study and practice of distinct Native literary traditions in North America.

Download or read book Our Story Begins written by Elissa Brent Weissman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-07-04 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From award-winning author Elissa Brent Weissman comes a collection of quirky, smart, and vulnerable childhood works by some of today’s foremost children’s authors and illustrators—revealing young talent, the storytellers they would one day become, and the creativity they inspire today. Everyone’s story begins somewhere… For Linda Sue Park, it was a trip to the ocean, a brand-new typewriter, and a little creative license. For Jarrett J. Krosoczka, it was a third grade writing assignment that ignited a creative fire in a kid who liked to draw. For Kwame Alexander, it was a loving poem composed for Mother’s Day—and perfected through draft after discarded draft. For others, it was a teacher, a parent, a beloved book, a word of encouragement. It was trying, and failing, and trying again. It was a love of words, and pictures, and stories. Your story is beginning, too. Where will it go?

Download or read book Welcome to the Writer s Life written by Paulette Perhach and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2018-08-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn how to take your work to the next level with this informative guide on the craft, business, and lifestyle of writing With warmth and humor, Paulette Perhach welcomes you into the writer’s life as someone who has once been on the outside looking in. Like a freshman orientation for writers, this book includes an in-depth exploration of all the elements of being a writer—from your writing practice to your reading practice, from your writing craft to the all-important and often-overlooked business of writing. In Welcome to the Writer’s Life, you will learn how to tap into the powers of crowdsourcing and social media to grow your writing career. Perhach also unpacks the latest research on success, gamification, and lifestyle design, demonstrating how you can use these findings to further improve your writing projects. Complete with exercises, tools, checklists, infographics, and behind-the-scenes tips from working writers of all types, this book offers everything you need to jump-start a successful writing life.

Download or read book Lean Out written by Elissa Shevinksy and published by OR Books. This book was released on 2015-09-03 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Disconcertingly thought-provoking.” —TechCrunch "Nineteen disruptive, disturbing and divergent voices ... an honest portrait of a network of gender-oppressed people leaning every which way." —Feministing "Everyone who hires or manages anyone in tech ought to read the remarkable book Lean Out. If tech companies are unwelcoming places, to hell with them. Start your own company and run it better." —The Los Angeles Times Why aren’t the great, qualified women already in tech being hired or promoted? Should people who don’t fit in seek to join an institution that is actively hostile to them? Does the tech industry deserve women leaders? The split between the stated ideals of the corporate elite and the reality of working life for women in the tech industry—whether in large public tech companies or VC-backed start-ups, in anonymous gaming forums, or in Silicon Valley or Alley—seems designed to crush women’s spirits. Corporate manifestos by women who already fit in (or who are able to convincingly fake it) aren’t helping. There is a high cost for the generation of young women and transgender people currently navigating the harsh realities of the tech industry, who gave themselves to their careers only to be ignored, harassed and disrespected. Not everyone can be a CEO; not everyone is able to embrace a workplace culture that diminishes the contributions of women and ignores real complaints. The very culture of high tech, where foosball tables and endless supplies of beer are de facto perks, but maternity leave and breast-feeding stations are controversial, is designed to appeal to young men. Lean Out collects 25 stories from the modern tech industry, from people who fought GamerGate and from women and transgender artists who have made their own games, from women who have started their own companies and who have worked for some of the most successful corporations in America, from LGBTQ women, from women of color, from transgender people and people who do not ascribe to a gender. All are fed up with the glacial pace of cultural change in America’s tech industry. Included are essays by anna anthropy, Leigh Alexander, Sunny Allen, Lauren Bacon, Katherine Cross, Dom DeGuzman, FAKEGRIMLOCK, Krys Freeman, Gesche Haas, Ash Huang, Erica Joy, Jenni Lee, Katy Levinson, Melanie Moore, Leanne Pittsford, Brook Shelley, Elissa Shevinsky, Erica Swallow, and Squinky. Edited and selected by entrepreneur and tech veteran Elissa Shevinsky, Lean Out sees a possible way forward that uses tech and creative disengagement to jettison 20th century corporate culture: “I’ve figured out a way to create safe space for myself in tech,” writes Shevinsky. “I’ve left Silicon Valley, and now work remotely from home. I adore everyone on my team, because I hired them myself.”