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Book Title

The Private I

Subtitle
Privacy in a Public World
Author 1
Edited by Molly Peacock
Body
These candid, daring, engaging, and decidedly literate writings address the dual question of how we find privacy in this day and age and how we lose it. Comtemporary writers from a wide array from backgrounds—among them Dorothy Allison, Jonathan Franzen, F. Gonzalez-Crussi, Wayne Koestenbaum, Yusek Komunyakaa, Wendy Lesser, Kathleen Norris, and Robin West—tackle the issue of privacy on many levels, including the global, communal, and very personal.

Specific essay topics include the implications of surveillance technology; teen web sites and the lives of the girls who create them; the culture of sexual relations in today's prisons; "Privacy in the Films of Lana Turner;" and the polarity of warm, sometimes claustrophobic, Latin communities versus their cold, sometimes isolated, North American counterparts.

"Ambitious . . . [An] impressive roster [of contributors] . . . Contains challenging ideas and questions for those who want to pursue the topic in depth."—Publishers Weekly

"The Private I makes a useful, provocative, and lasting connection between literature and modern life."—Minneapolis Star Tribune

"A worthy troupe of articulate contributors provocatively illuminate diverse aspects of our contradictory feelings about protecting and voilating privacy."—Booklist

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List Price
$16.00
ISBN
ISBN
978-1-55597-313-1
Format
Format
Paperback
Publication Date
Publication Date
Subject
Pages
Pages
280
Trim Size
Trim Size
6 x 9
Keynote
"Peacock has compiled a series of essays about privacy and the modern world from literary figures such as Jonathan Franzen, Dorothy Allison, and Kathleen Norris. . . . Written in a literary, narrative style, these essays offer several insights into the state of privacy today."—Library Journal

About the Author

Molly Peacock, a poet and a creative nonfiction writer, is the author of The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life's Work at 72 (2010) and six books of poetry, including The Second Blush (2008) and Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems (2002). Among her other works are a memoir called Paradise, Piece By Piece (1998) and How To Read A Poem and Start A Poetry Circle (1999). She is the editor of a collection of creative non-fiction, The Private I: Privacy in a Public World (2001) and the co-editor of Poetry in Motion: One Hundred Poems from the Subways and Buses (1996).
 
Born in Buffalo, New York, Molly received a B.A. magna cum laude from Harpur College (Binghamton University, SUNY) and an M.A. with honors from The Writing Seminars at The Johns Hopkins University. A transplanted New Yorker and a dual American-Canadian citizen, she now lives with her husband, James Joyce scholar Michael Groden, in Toronto.
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