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Alice Fulton received a 2011 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. Her eight books include The Nightingales of Troy: Connected Stories; Cascade Experiment: Selected Poems; and Felt, which was awarded the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress. Felt also was selected by the Los Angeles Times as one of the Best Books of 2001 and as a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Her other books include Sensual Math; Powers Of Congress; Palladium, winner of the National Poetry Series and the Society of Midland Authors Award; and Dance Script With Electric Ballerina, winner of The Associated Writing Programs Award. A collection of essays, Feeling as a Foreign Language: The Good Strangeness of Poetry, was published by Graywolf Press.
Fulton has received fellowships in poetry from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, The Michigan Society of Fellows, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work has been included in The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry; The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of Poetry Magazine; five editions of The Best American Poetry series; and the 10th Anniversary edition and the 25th Anniversary edition (forthcoming) of The Best of the Best American Poetry. Two stories from The Nightingales of Troy were selected for the Best American Short Stories series, another for the Pushcart Prize, and a fourth for the Editor's Prize in Fiction. She has also received Pushcart Prizes in poetry, the Bess Hokin award from Poetry, The Elizabeth Matchett Stover Award from Southwest Review, and the Emily Dickinson and Consuelo Ford Awards from the Poetry Society of America.
Fulton has been the George Elliston Poet at University of Cincinnati, the Roberta C. Holloway Lecturer in the Practice of Poetry at University of California, Berkeley, The Michael M. Rea Visiting Writer at University of Virginia, and a Visiting Professor at University of California, Los Angeles, Ohio State University, and the University of North Carolina. She is currently the Ann S. Bowers Professor of English at Cornell University.
Alice Fulton's website
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Karen:
Charlotte Garahan's statement, "As a waitress, you learn to be attentive
to the needs of others" echoes Mamie Flynn Garrahan's "A woman in labor should
have plenty for others fixed to eat...". These two women forge ahead even in the
midst of pain, an act that may remind the modern reader of a familiar scenario:
that of women attending to others, sometimes at the expense of themselves.
Whether this selflessness is generous, self-defeating, or quite heroic, that
mindset seems to shape part of the world these characters live in. It also seems
to tie into the nursing that appears in other stories - was there a particular
inspiration behind this caregiving theme?
Alice:
That attitude was a cultural given for the characters in the book. That
particular theme of self-sacrifice came from the people who inspired the
characters, women who put others before themselves. "In the 20th century, I
believe there are no saints left," Mamie says in the first sentence, and many of
the characters throughout the book struggle with the problem of goodness. The
problem of evil is a well-known philosophical quandary, but we seldom think of
goodness as a problem. Yet as you say, there's ...
Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
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