Sally Cline

A portrait of the Jazz Age artist and wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald traces their dysfunctional marriage, Zelda's work as a painter and dancer, and her struggle to define herself despite the glamorous flapper identity placed upon her by her husband. Reprint.

Her Voice in Paradise

Zelda Fitzgerald

Dale Spender

Reflecting Men at Twice Their Natural Size

"Dashiell Hammett changed the face of crime fiction. In five novels published over five years as well as a string of stories, he transformed the mystery genre into literature and left us with the figure of the hard-boiled detective, from the Continental Op to Sam Spade--immortalized on film by Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon--and the more glamorous Thin Man, also made iconic with the aid of Hollywood. A brilliant writer, Hammett was a complex and enigmatic man. After 1934 until his death in 1961, he published no more novels and suffered from a writer's block that both shamed and maimed him. He is identified with his tough protagonists, but his tuberculosis compromised his masculine identity and alcoholism may have been his answer. A former Pinkerton detective who valued honesty, he was attracted to women who lied outrageously, most notably Lillian Hellman, with whom he conducted a thirty-year affair. A controversial political activist who stood up for civil liberty, he was also a very private man. In this compact new biography, Sally Cline uses fresh research, including interviews with Hammett's family and Hellman's heir, to reexamine the life and works of the writer whom Raymond Chandler called "the ace performer.""--

man of mystery

Dashiell Hammett

At Twice Their Natural Size

Reflecting Men

Carole Angier

Life Writing: A Writers' & Artists' Companion is an essential guide to writing biography, autobiography and memoir. PART 1 explores the history and forms of life writing and the challenges and potential pitfalls of the genre. PART 2 includes tips by bestselling writers: Diana Athill, Alan Bennett, Alain de Botton, Jill Dawson, Millicent Dillon, Margaret Drabble, Geoff Dyer, Victoria Glendinning, Lyndall Gordon, Peter Hayter, Richard Holmes, Michael Holroyd, Kathryn Hughes, Diane Johnson, Hermione Lee, Andrew Lownie, Janet Malcolm, Alexander Masters, Nancy Milford, Blake Morrison, Andrew Morton, Clare Mulley, Jenni Murray, Nicholas Murray, Kristina Olsson, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, Meryle Secrest, Miranda Seymour, Frances Spalding, Hilary Spurling, Boyd Tonkin, Edmund White. PART 3 includes practical advice - from planning, researching and interviewing to writing, pacing and navigating ethical issues.

A Writers' and Artists' Companion

Life Writing

"Cline explores the contemporary meaning of and motivations for being in a couple ... (including a) fascinating chapter on the union of artists, such as that of Margaret Drabble and Michael Holroyd ... revealing ... engrossing." Publishers Weekly.

Scenes from the Inside

Couples

Shows how women can learn to take risks, grow up, make decisions, live on her own, and value other women through celibacy, calling for a celebration of non-genital sexuality. 15,000 first printing.

Women, Passion & Celibacy

Legend views Zelda Fitzgerald as the mythical American Dream Girl of the 1920s, later as the Southern Belle whose brilliant husband Scott remained loyal despite her frequent breakdowns and final madness. The Zelda that Sally Cline reveals was a serious artist: a painter of extraordinary and disturbing vision, a talented dancer and a witty and original writer whose work Scott often used in his own novels but never acknowledged. Hitherto untapped sources, including medical evidence and interviews with Zelda's last psychiatrist, suggest that her insanity may have been less a specific clinical condition than the product of her treatment for schizophrenia and her husband's behaviour towards her. Cline shows how Scott's alcoholism, too, was as destructive of Zelda and their marriage as it was of him. Zelda's vivid and tragic life was lived at the height of the Jazz Age. Her circle included Edmund Wilson, John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker and Lillian Hellman. Sally Cline evokes that gilttering group and also, perhaps more significantly, the Deep South from which Zelda longed to escape but from which she could never free herself.

Dashiell Hammett changed the face of crime fiction. In five novels published over five years as well as a string of stories, he transformed the mystery genre into literature and left us with the figure of the hard-boiled detective, from the Continental Op to Sam Spade—immortalized on film by Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon—and the more glamorous Thin Man, also made iconic with the aid of Hollywood. A brilliant writer, Hammett was a complex and enigmatic man. After 1934 until his death in 1961, he published no more novels and suffered from a writer’s block that both shamed and maimed him. He is identified with his tough protagonists, but his tuberculosis compromised his masculine identity and alcoholism may have been his answer. A former Pinkerton detective who valued honesty, he was attracted to women who lied outrageously, most notably Lillian Hellman, with whom he conducted a thirty-year affair. A controversial political activist who stood up for civil liberty, he was also a very private man. In this compact new biography, Sally Cline uses fresh research, including interviews with Hammett’s family and Hellman’s heir, to reexamine the life and works of the writer whom Raymond Chandler called “the ace performer.”

Man of Mystery

From Agatha Christie and Patricia Highsmith to Val McDermid and JK Rowling, After Agatha is an indispensable guide to women's crime writing over the last century and an exploration of why women read crime Spanning the 1930s to present day, After Agatha charts the explosion in women's crime writing and examines key developments on both sides of the Atlantic: from the women writers at the helm of the UK Golden Age and their American and Canadian counterparts fighting to be heard, to the 1980s experimental trio, Marcia Muller, Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton, who created the first female PIs, and the more recent emergence of forensic crime writing and domestic noir thrillers such as Gone Girl and Apple Tree Yard. After Agatha examines the diversification of crime writing and highlights landmark women's novels which featured the marginalised in society as centralised characters. Cline also explores why women readers are drawn to the genre and seek out justice in crime fiction, in a world where violent crimes against women rarely have such resolution. The book includes interviews with dozens of contemporary authors such as Ann Cleeves, Sophie Hannah, Tess Gerritsen and Kathy Reichs and features the work of hundreds of women crime and mystery writers. It is an essential read for crime fiction lovers.

Women Write Crime

After Agatha

Midge Gillies

An authoritative and inspiring companion to writing in a wide range of non-fiction genres, including tips from bestselling authors such as Siri Hustvedt and Dava Sobel.

Writing About Everything From Travel to Food to Sex

Literary Non-Fiction: A Writers' & Artists' Companion

A professional guide to the rapidly evolving genre of literary non-fiction written by tutors from the prestigious Arvon Foundation course and with contributions from leading writers.

The Arvon Book of Literary Non-Fiction

Explores the connections between the writings and colorful lifestyle of Radclyffe Hall, a best-selling lesbian poet and novelist whose flamboyant antics raised many eyebrows during the early twentieth century. Reprint.

A Woman Called John

Radclyffe Hall

Fascinating, wide-ranging, hugely knowledgeable - an indispensable guide and a beguiling education William Boyd Packed with insights and advice - just the inspiration to start writing! Jenny Uglow Everyone has a story This book shows how the best writers tell them, and offers advice on how to tell them yourself. Biographers Sally Cline and Carole Angier teach life writing - an area of creative writing that is exploding in popularity - at the world-famous Arvon Foundation. They have distilled the essence of their popular course on memoir, autobiography and biography into this wide-ranging book. The Arvon Book of Life Writing offers three fascinating ways into the genre. First, reflections on their trade by the authors, exploring its special challenges: truth, memory, ethics, evidence and interpretation. Second, personal tips and tales from 32 top British and American life writers - autobiographers and memoirists, literary, sports and celebrity biographers; plus a critic, an agent, a literary editor, two novelists, and a ghost writer. Third, a practical guide, complete with exercises, designed for use in creative writing courses or by individual writers at home. No other book contains such detailed, witty and professional advice on the genre.

Writing biography, autobiography and memoir

The Arvon Book of Life Writing

Fascinating, wide-ranging, hugely knowledgeable - an indispensable guide and a beguiling education William Boyd Packed with insights and advice - just the inspiration to start writing! Jenny Uglow Everyone has a story. This book shows how the best writers tell them, and offers advice on how to tell them yourself. Biographers Sally Cline and Carole Angier teach life writing - an area of creative writing that is exploding in popularity - at the world-famous Arvon Foundation. They have distilled the essence of their popular course on memoir, autobiography and biography into this wide-ranging book. The Arvon Book of Life Writing offers three fascinating ways into the genre. First, reflections on their trade by the authors, exploring its special challenges: truth, memory, ethics, evidence and interpretation. Second, personal tips and tales from 32 top British and American life writers - autobiographers and memoirists, literary, sports and celebrity biographers; plus a critic, an agent, a literary editor, two novelists, and a ghost writer. Third, a practical guide, complete with exercises, designed for use in creative writing courses or by individual writers at home.

One of Us is Lying is a volume of nuanced and largely linked tales concerned with love, loss, longing and betrayal. Sally Cline sees darkness and suffering beneath polished surfaces and glittering conversations. Several of the stories appear domestic with an outward harmony but misery or even humiliation lurk quietly behind suburban facades. However the bold passionate writing reminds readers of historic violence and ancient fears as well as the small disturbances of contemporary life. In the linked stories Sally Cline examines intertwined and complex relationships between her characters over a number of years. A secondary character in one story may become the central character in another. The stand-alone fictions have different protagonists but as lives and tales weave in and out there are subtle echoes and symbols that seem to edge towards stories already linked. The settings roam from quiet Greek villages, through the University cities of Oxford and Cambridge, into the bustling present of Halifax in Nova Scotia, back into the past of Nazi Germany. The actions take place in or around Scottish mountains, old fashioned mental asylums, Cretan cafes, and slow moving trains. Conflict thrives in an exotic art gallery, a Harley Street abortion clinic, an old people's home and on several beaches. The characters are women and men, gay, straight, married, single, and every age from childhood to the 80s. We see children everywhere absorbed in family life. We see elderly clients shut away in isolated homes. Characters include railway passengers, celebrated lawyers and musicians, care home workers, librarians, artists, hospital staff, writers, private psychiatrists, amateur photographers, and professional journalists. Couples are examined and motherhood assessed. There is warmth and wit in the writing. Several of the stories generate a feeling of unease where there is desolation and dread but never dullness. All the stories show an intense focus on rhythm and three very short tales could be read as prose poetry.

One of Us Is Lying

Essential reading for anyone interested in writing biography or memoir, with practical advice from successful biographers and creative writing teachers.

Writing Biography, Autobiography and Memoir

lluminated by a profound yet humorous vision, Lifting the Taboo explores the specific relationship women of many colors, cultures, ages, and sexual orientations have to their own deaths, their attitudes towards loss, and their disposition to their role as primary care-givers to the dying. Specifically, the book weighs the implications of breast cancer and examines in detail Alzheimer's Disease which, contrary to popular myth, can in several significant ways be perceived as a women's disease. Investigating mothers' responses to children's deaths, Sally Cline establishes that women's relationships to death are intricately connected to the experience of giving birth. They are, she argues, therefore psychologically and emotionally different from those of men. Cline goes on to examine women's roles and responses to AIDS and suicide, women's sexual relationships while dying, how society views widows as leftover lives, and women's radical work in hospices and death therapy, as well as their roles as female funeral directors.

Sally Cline

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