Hudson Review anthology book launch on Oct. 15
Our managing editor Ron Koury’s new anthology, War and Imagination: Perspectives from the Hudson Review, will have a book launch and panel Tuesday, October 15, 2024 at 6 p.m. EDT at the New York Society Library and streaming.
Register for in-person event (space limited): $15
Register for virtual event: $10
War and Imagination includes selections from Tennessee Williams, Louis Simpson, Nina Bogin, Leo Tolstoy, Lara Prescott, Maxine Kumin, Benjamin Fondane, Maria Terrone, Brooke Allen, and more. In this event, contributors Cary Holladay, Marilyn Nelson, Lara Prescott, and Brooke Allen discuss ways in which experiences of war are unique, yet with aspects of the universal present in each.
About the anthology:
Stories of war and conflict form the backbone of much of the Western literary canon, portraying a certain image of heroism, stoicism, and survival in the face of violence. War and Imagination, edited by Ronald Koury, challenges the canon with essays, short stories, and a wide variety of perspectives.
Paying particular attention to the twentieth century and prioritizing the writings of civilians, the works highlighted in War and Imagination offer an opportunity to challenge representations of well-known conflicts with a wide variety of pieces from the front lines and beyond, such as letters from German soldiers at the siege of Stalingrad, a Holocaust memoir by physicist Abraham Pais, a previously unpublished story by Tennessee Williams, a haunting tale of the Spanish Civil War, and a fresh translation of the final act of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The selections make real the unimaginable horrors of survival during wartime while showcasing unique interpretations that allow readers to ponder the mystery from another point of view.
Panel speakers:
Well-known Southern author Cary Holladay has received an O. Henry Prize and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. “The Bridge,” her story in the anthology, appears in her collection Horse People: Stories (Louisiana State University Press, 2013). Her most recent book is Images of America: Glen Allen (Arcadia Publishing, 2022).
Marilyn Nelson is an American poet. A professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut and the former poet laureate of Connecticut, she is also a winner of several important awards, among them the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature, and the Frost Medal. In spring 2000, a fellowship in Contemplative Practices sponsored by the Center for the Contemplative Mind in Society, funded by the Fetzer Institute, allowed her to teach two sections of “Poetry and Meditation” to two groups of cadets at the US Military Academy at West Point.
Lara Prescott’s debut novel The Secrets We Kept was published by Knopf in 2019 (and has been published in thirty countries). She currently lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Noted literary critic Brooke Allen is a contributing editor of The Hudson Review who teaches in the Bennington Prison Education Initiative. Her most recent book is Benazir Bhutto: Favored Daughter (New Harvest, 2016).