When you truly fall in love, whether with a person or a place, you make everything else fit around it. The last eight years of my life have been a love affair with this place. (Gwendolyn Bounds, author of Little Chapel on the River: A Pub, a Town, and the Search for What Matters Most)
May has assembled an astonishing collection of portraits. What's particularly cool is that they are truly story-telling—they grab you and compel you to actually want to read the work of the writers she photographed—this is no small thing in a busy world saturated with imagery. This book gives us not only a revealing visual record of just how rich the Hudson Valley is in talent, but also a treasure map to a lifetime's worth of great works. (Doug Menuez, photographer)
A book of great beauty and emotion, at once revealing and painfully intimate. Nina Shengold's deceptively easy conversational tone, coupled with the powerful black and white photos by Jennifer May, provides an instant connection—you feel you are in the same room with their subject while the interview is taking place. (Frank Juliano, Executive Director, The Hudson Valley Writers' Center and Slapering Hol Press)
Foreword Dennis Stock Stock, Dennis
Introduction
Chinua Achebe 1
Susannah Appelbaum 7
John Ashbery 9
Shalom Auslander 15
Scott Ian Barry 19
Barbara Bash 21
Helen Benedict and Stephen O'Connor 23
Gwendolyn Bounds 29
Jon Bowermaster 31
John Bowers 37
Wesley Brown 43
Akiko Busch 49
Kris Carr 51
Benjamin Cheever 53
Da Chen and Sunny 59
Laura Shaine Cunningham 65
John Darnton 69
Cornelius Eady and Sarah Micklem 75
Nick Flynn 81
Martha Frankel 87
Alison Gaylin 89
Frank D. Gilroy, Tony Gilroy, and Dan Gilroy 91
Jonathan Gould 97
Mikhail Horowitz 101
Marie Howe 103
Marilyn Johnson 109
Robert Kelly 111
Lucy Knisley 115
Casey Kurtti 117
James Lasdun 119
Naton Leslie 123
Ann M. Martin 125
Jana Martin 129
Valerie Martin and John Cullen 131
Frank McCourt, Malachy McCourt, and Alphie McCourt 137
Daniel Mendelsohn 143
Bradford Morrow 147
Ron Nyswaner 151
Susan Orlean 155
Leila Philip 161
Daniel Pinkwater 163
Julie Powell 167
Nicole Quinn 173
David Rees 175
Susan Richards 177
Charley Rosen 179
Edwin Sanchez 183
Ed Sanders 185
Esmeralda Santiago 191
Gene Santoro 197
John Sayles 201
Edward Schwarzschild 207
Pete Seeger 209
Danny Shanahan 215
John Patrick Shanley 217
Russeli Shorto 223
Zachary Sklar 227
Sparrow 233
Nova Ren Suma 235
Hudson Talbott 237
Abigail Thomas 239
Corinne Trang 245
Janine Pommy Vega 249
Linda Villarosa 255
Nancy Willard 257
Daniel Wolff 261
Rebecca Wolff 263
Kim Wozencraft 267
Acknowledgments 269
Overview