The ebook and original paperback editions are both available for “Enraptured Space: Gender, Class, and Ecology in the Work of Paula Meehan” and “Blue Futures, Break Open: A Novel.”
Paula Meehan, one of Ireland’s most celebrated contemporary poets, is the subject of “Enraptured Space: Gender, Class, and Ecology in the Work of Paula Meehan” by Kathryn J. Kirkpatrick.
In this first book-length study, Meehan emerges as an original voice whose perspectives on gender, class and ecology are transforming the Irish literary landscape and beyond. Kirkpatrick, a scholar as well as a practicing poet, explores how scholarship is grounded in an imaginative exchange between the words on the page and the material conditions of the scholar who works to inhabit them in this work that breaches the boundaries of criticism and memoir. In her study of Meehan, Kirkpatrick reads the texts through the lenses of gender studies, the environmental humanities, ecocriticism and social class.
Kirkpatrick herself has authored seven collections of poetry, most recently “The Fisher Queen: New and Selected Poems.” She is a professor of English at Appalachian State University, where she helped to found the Animal Studies minor. Keep an eye out for an upcoming Q&A session with her on our Booktimist blog later this month. Both the ebook and original paperback edition are available to purchase for $24.99 on our website as well as online sites like IndieBound, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
On the heels of Black History Month, WVU Press welcomes “Blue Futures, Break Open: A Novel” by Zoë Gadegbeku. Her debut novel posits an answer to the question, “When the souls of enslaved Black people flew away to freedom, where did they go?” Gadegbeku, who hails from Accra, Ghana, has crafted a different take on traditional African religions and Vodou highlighting the interdependence of magic and freedom.
Blue Basin Island, a mythical island oasis, is the final resting spot of formerly enslaved Africans whose souls have flown from Earth — not to heaven or purgatory but towards freedom and a new life. Lucille, a half-divine, half-human seamstress juggles the responsibility of ensuring everyone’s safety while seeking and losing love in her personal life. But even here, outside of time, the souls are not completely insulated from their former world — each time a Black person anywhere is harmed, a piece of Blue Basin disintegrates, for example an earthquake leaves thousands dead and bricks crumble on the island. Grounding the story in African folklore and dipping into the rich literary tradition around African people with the power of flight, Gadegbeku visualizes the destination at the end of the flight and the new life that awaits them in this novel of Afrofuturism.
Read more from Zoë Gadegbeku, her influences and the reading recommendations that inspired the novel on our Booktimist blog. Both the ebook and original paperback edition are available to purchase for $19.99 on our website as well as online sites like IndieBound, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.