duPont Library: English 397: Contemporary American Fiction: About the Authors

Author Biographies and More

American National Biography
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Contains 3 million literature citations from thousands of journals, monographs, dissertations, and more than 500,000 primary works – including rare and obscure texts, multiple versions, and non-traditional sources like comics, theatre performances, and author readings. Enhanced by interpretive sources such as book reviews and criticism sourced from wider, interdisciplinary publications in the fields such as humanities and history, it provides diverse, global perspectives with sources from all over the world – Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North and South America - the majority of which are in full-text.
Includes: African American Poetry, American Drama 1714–1915, American Poetry, Annual Bibliography Of English Language And Literature, 1920– (Abell), Canadian Poetry, Early American Fiction 1789–1850, Early American Fiction 1789–1875, Early English Prose Fiction, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, English Drama (including Shakespeare), English Poetry, The Faber Poetry Library, King James Bible, Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Twentieth-Century African American Poetry, Twentieth-Century American Poetry, Twentieth-Century English Poetry.
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Also contains criticism (journal articles), Reference works, Biographies, Bibliographies, Websites, video clips of poets reading their own and other poets' work, Shakespeare audio plays.

Understanding Colson Whitehead by Derek C. Maus An inviting point of entrance into the truth seeking, genre defying novels of the award-winning author In 2020 Colson Whitehead became the youngest recipient of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. Although Whitehead's widely divergent books complicate overarching categorization, Derek C. Maus argues that they are linked by their skepticism toward the ostensible wisdom inherited from past generations and the various forms of "stories" that transmit it. Whitehead, best known for his Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Underground Railroad, bids readers to accompany him on challenging, often open-ended literary excursions designed to reexamine--and frequently defy--accepted notions of truth. Understanding Colson Whitehead unravels the parallel structures found within Whitehead's books from his 1999 debut The Intuitionist through 2019's The Nickel Boys, for which he won his second Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. By first imitating and then violating their conventions, Whitehead attempts to transcend the limits of the formulas of the genres in which he seems to write. Whitehead similarly tests subject matter, again imitating and then satirizing various forms of conventional wisdom as a means of calling out unexamined, ignored, or malevolent aspects of American culture. Although it is only one of many subjects that Whitehead addresses, race is often central to his work. It serves as a prime example of Whitehead's attempt to prompt his readers into revisiting their assumptions about meanings and values. By upending the literary formulas of the detective novel, the heroic folktale, the coming-of-age story, the zombie apocalypse, the slave narrative, and historical fiction, Whitehead reveals the flaws and shortcomings by which Americans have defined themselves. In addition to evoking such explicitly literary storytelling traditions, Whitehead also directs attention toward other interrelated historical and cultural processes that influence how race, class, gender, education, social status, and other categories of identity determine what an individual supposedly can and cannot do.
Call Number: Ebook

ISBN: 9781643361758

Publication Date: 202
Understanding Marilynne Robinson by Alexander John Engebretson A comprehensive study of the award-winning Midwestern author of fiction and nonfiction Alex Engebretson offers the first comprehensive study of Marilynne Robinson's fiction and essays to date, providing an overview of the author's life, themes, and literary and religious influences. Understanding Marilynne Robinson examines this author of three highly acclaimed novels and recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the Orange Prize for fiction, and the National Humanities Medal. Through close readings of the novels and essay collections, Engebretson uncovers the unifying elements of Robinson's work: a dialogue with liberal Protestantism, an emphasis on regional settings, the marked influence of nineteenth-century American literature, and the theme of home. The study begins with Housekeeping, Robinson's haunting debut novel, which undertakes a feminist revision of the Western genre. Twenty-four years later Robinson began a literary project that would bring her national recognition, three novels set in a small, rural Iowa town. The first was Gilead, which took up the major American themes of race, the legacy of the Civil War, and the tensions between secular and religious lives. Two more Gilead novels followed, Home and Lila, both of which display Robinson's gift for capturing the mysterious dynamics of sin and grace. In Understanding Marilynne Robinson, Engebretson also reviews her substantial body of non-fiction, which demonstrates a dazzling intellectual range, from the contemporary science-religion debates, to Shakespeare, to the fate of liberal democracy. Throughout this study Engebretson makes the argument for Marilynne Robinson as an essential, deeply unfashionable, visionary presence within today's literary scene.
Call Number: Ebook

ISBN: 9781611178036

Publication Date: 2017
The Toni Morrison Encyclopedia by Elizabeth Ann Beaulieu (Editor) Intended for lay readers and scholars alike, this reference offers a convenient overview of her life and achievements. The first book of its kind, this reference offers hundreds of alphabetically arranged entries on Morrison's works, major characters, themes, and other topics. Lengthier essays cover each of her novels, along with various approaches to her writings. Each of the entries was written by an expert contributor, and many close with suggestions for further reading. The volume concludes with a selected bibliography of major studies. All told, this book provides a remarkable overview of Morrison's primary concerns and achievements, charting a helpful course for readers who wish to venture deeper into the work of this extraordinary author. Toni Morrison is arguably the most popular and significant contemporary African American author of all time. As a writer, she personifies courage, blending the personal and the political and doing so in a way that resonates for readers of every age, race, ethnicity, and gender. Her stories are imagined in language that is both graceful and powerful--a truly poetic prose. Morrison's works have received increased scholarly attention, and her contributions were formally recognized around the world when she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
Call Number: Ebook

ISBN: 9780313316999

Publication Date: 2003

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English 397: Contemporary American Fiction

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Author Biographies and More