Janet McDonald

A fresh new voice on the YA scene. Raven's life has been derailed. She never expected she'd be a mother at sixteen like her best friend, Aisha, and she's afraid she's going to be just another high school dropout, a project girl with few prospects. And although Raven is ambitious, when is she going to find the time to finish school in the few minutes she's not looking for a job or caring for her infant son, Smokey? Then her older sister, Dell, tells her about a spelling bee that promises the winner enrollment in a college prep program and a scholarship. But spelling? There isn't a subject she's worse at! Still, Raven is fiercely determined to win, and so she starts memorizing words. In Janet McDonald's powerful and funny novel, a smart and resilient young woman whose life isn't what she dreamed it would be learns that there are many ways to spell SUCCESS.

Spellbound

Afraid that she will have nowhere to go when her welfare checks are stopped, nineteen-year-old high school dropout Aisha tries to figure out how she can support herself and her two young children in New York City.

Chill Wind

Martin Kerby

Margaret Baguley

This handbook explores a diverse range of artistic and cultural responses to modern conflict, from Mons in the First World War to Kabul in the twenty-first century. With over thirty chapters from an international range of contributors, ranging from the UK to the US and Australia, and working across history, art, literature, and media, it offers a significant interdisciplinary contribution to the study of modern war, and our artistic and cultural responses to it. The handbook is divided into three parts. The first part explores how communities and individuals responded to loss and grief by using art and culture to assimilate the experience as an act of survival and resilience. The second part explores how conflict exerts a powerful influence on the expression and formation of both individual, group, racial, cultural and national identities and the role played by art, literature, and education in this process. The third part moves beyond the actual experience of conflict and its connection with issues of identity to explore how individuals and society have made use of art and culture to commemorate the war. In this way, it offers a unique breadth of vision and perspective, to explore how conflicts have been both represented and remembered since the early twentieth century.

The British Isles, the United States and Australasia

The Palgrave Handbook of Artistic and Cultural Responses to War since 1914

Hustle's personal Harlem was sorely in need of a renaissance. For him, it was the place where a scared kid named Eric Samson had been ditched by druggy parents and dismissed by frustrated teachers. Abandoned to the streets to raise himself, Eric Samson knows life won't be easy, beginning with the choices he must make. The fast cash of the streets still tempts him, but the threat of getting locked up – again – is daunting. Maybe Eric's way out is as Harlem Hustle, the rapper he dreams of being. At his side is Manley "Ride" Freeman, surrogate brother and best friend. And Jeannette Simpson, the college-bound "round-the-way" girl he hopes will be more than a friend. But does Eric have the strength to leave the familiar street life behind and the courage to reach for his dream? In her companion to Brother Hood, Janet McDonald once again captures the rhythms of Harlem in this fast, funny story of a restless teenager who uses the power of words to rise above it all.

Harlem Hustle

Recounts the story of Janet McDonald, who grew up in the New York projects and graduated from Vassar College, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and New York University School of Law, before becoming a lawyer in Paris.

Project Girl

Robert Mason

This is the first major collection to reimagine and analyse the role of the creative arts in building resilient and inclusive regional communities. Bringing together Australia’s leading theorists in the creative industries, as well as case studies from practitioners working in the creative and performing arts and new material from targeted research projects, the book reconceptualizes the very meaning of regionalism and the position – and potential – of creative spaces in non-metropolitan centres.

Janet McDonald

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