Alum Authors 2024
Trouble With You
by Ellen Feldman BMC '64
"Rich in colorful characters, Feldman's riveting tale is one of resilience, determination, and hope." --Booklist
In an exuberant post WWII New York City, a young woman is forced to reinvent her life and choose between the safe and the ethical, and the men who represent each...
Set in New York City in the heady aftermath of World War II when the men were coming home, the women were exhaling in relief, and everyone was having babies, The Trouble With Youis the story of a young woman whose rosy future is upended in a single instant. Raised never to step out of bounds, educated in one of the Sister Seven Colleges for a career as a wife and mother, torn between her cousin Mimi who is determined to keep her a "nice girl"--the kind that marries a doctor--and her aunt Rose who has a rebellious past of her own, Fanny struggles to raise her young daughter and forge a new life by sheer will and pluck. When she gets a job as a secretary to the "queen" of radio serials--never to be referred to as soaps--she discovers she likes working, and through her friendship with an actress who stars in the series and a man who writes them, comes face to face with the blacklist which is destroying careers and wrecking lives. Ultimately, Fanny must decide between playing it safe or doing what she knows is right in this vivid evocation of a world that seems at once light years away and strangely immediate.
Solve Not Serve
Kelly Griffin BMC '99
"This is not just 'outside-the-box' thinking. This is 'set the box on fire, throw it over a cliff, and start inventing entirely new shapes' thinking."
In Solve, Not Serve: What Other Nonprofit Management Books Won't Tell You, author Kelly E. Griffin proposes a long-overdue paradigm shift within the social sector. Her insights are gleaned from decades of experience as a nonprofit strategist and advisor, extensive research and analysis, and perspectives from dozens of inspirational and effective nonprofit leaders, funders, and independent thinkers.
With piercing honesty and charming wit, Griffin offers compelling ideas and strategies that provide viable solutions for solving the biggest problems our society faces today.
This guidebook will motivate employees, volunteers, and financial supporters of the nonprofit sector to:
- Define clear priorities
- Develop sustainable leadership
- Make brave decisions
- Stand up to unreasonable funder expectations
- Apply only the most relevant practices from for-profit business
Solve, Not Serve will empower and inspire you if, like Griffin, you are dedicated to making the world a better place.
Snape: The definitive analysis of Hogwarts's mysterious potions master
by Lorrie Kim BMC '89
This fully revised and expanded edition of Lorrie Kim's classic work digs deep into the life and legend of Severus Snape, fan-favorite of the Harry Potter series
While the Harry Potter series may follow the journey of the Boy Who Lived, if you want to know the whole story, keep your eyes fixed on Severus Snape. This greasy-haired, grumpy genius, one of J.K. Rowling's most enduring gifts to English literature, is the archetypal ill-tempered teacher: demanding, acerbic, and impossible to ignore. Over the span of seven novels, Snape's remarkable role in the series can be hard to parse: Where do his true allegiances lie? Can a former Death Eater change his spots? Why does he seem to loathe the boy he's pledged to protect?
Late Epistle
by Anne Myles BMC '84
Winner of 2022 Sappho's Prize in Poetry
Late Epistle is a rare first book, one that radiates all the pleasures of poetry-sound, form, and figurative language, among others-but also one that evidences a life transformed by discovery. Read and marvel at Anne Myles's prowess, then read again to be forever changed by her vulnerability and depth of feeling. This "dark and lustrous" book permits entry into the "not-yet-known" with miraculous clarity.-Natasha Sajé, author of The Future Will Call You Something Else A sensual imagination informs these poems with startling images and line turns that astonish. I love the childhood narratives, the family sadnesses and secrets revealed, the tender, wise observations. Formally inventive, the poems that showcase a woman-loving-woman anchor the speaker in a story of self-invention and a sustainable life.
-Robin Becker, author of The Black Bear Inside Me Muriel Rukeyser asks, "What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?" In this candid, emphatically visceral collection, Anne Myles speaks her truth with unflinching ardency, astonishing the reader with poems that are both masterfully crafted and strikingly forthright. Reading this book, I experienced the pure delight of a strongly female voice claiming its identity and purpose.
-Martha Silano, author of Gravity Assist In Late Epistle, Anne Myles has given us a thoughtful and moving account of her journey to become a poet, singing in a voice (Athena-like, sprung fully formed) that is lyrical and tender, honest and unsparing. In poems of family, loss, love, grief, and the ongoing quest to find and express the true self, the deep intelligence of the work shines through in evocative imagery, lovely language, and subtle yet effective uses of form.
-Moira Egan, author of Amore e morte
Synaesthesium: Poems
by Moira Egan BMC '84
Who's Writing This Story?!
by Robin Newman BMC '89
Who's the real boss of a story? The writer or the characters who live to tell the tale? Or both together?
Follow the three little pigs as they argue with the writer over what kind of story to tell. Will the hero become the villain? Find out in this fun introduction to the essential components all great stories need.
Fishing the Desert
by Brooks Robards BMC '64
Our Mothers Ourselves
by Veena Siddharth BMC '84
This book tells the stories of our mothers, six ordinary women who undertook extraordinary journeys. It is a tribute and an expression of love.
Antifan Girlfriend
by Paula Weiss BMC '84
The Antifan Girlfriend is a dystopian social satire and spy thriller. It's now 2089, several decades after civil war has divided America into a Blue socialist dictatorship on the coasts, and the still-free Red flyover country. The woke "Diversity Justice Republic," a vassal state of China, uses a social credit system that doles out preferential access to food, housing, vacations, and transportation. High credit elites live in luxury, while low credit types live in dormitories, and scramble for crumbs. "Plores," or the Deplorables who fought against the Republic during the war, are segregated from Crediteers and are forced to do menial work to survive. Gun ownership and Christian preaching are now capital crimes.
Malia is illegally reading the dangerous old books she safeguards from the public as a librarian. She stumbles into a relationship with David, a powerful Antifan Defense Forces commander, whose own Deplorable background distances him from the woke culture. David vows to help Malia recover the daughter who was stolen from her by the government years earlier.
The search for Malia's daughter brings Malia into the orbit of sinister bureaucrats conducting lethal truth serum experiments on low Social Crediteers under direction from Beijing. The Antifans turn Malia to spy on the bureaucrats, even as they seek to separate her from David because of her low-credit status. Malia is both repelled by and drawn to Adam, the ringleader, who pursues her without knowing her Antifan ties. Meanwhile, Malia and David are planning their dangerous escape over the militarized border into the United States.
The Antifan Girlfriend will frighten you, keep you in suspense until the very end, and yet reassure you that human beings will always strive for love and freedom.
"Do not defy, you must conform! The mask, the chip, are now the norm!"- chant at the 2089 Coronavirus Liberation Day parade.