Amazing Place - by Marianne Gingher (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Some of us understand place in terms of family and community, landscape, or even the weather. For others, the idea of place becomes more distinct and particular: the sound of someone humming while washing dishes, the musical cadence of a mountain accent, the smell of a tobacco field under the hot Piedmont sun. Some of North Carolina's finest writers ruminate on the meaning of place in this collection of twenty-one original essays, untangling North Carolina's influence on their work, exploring how the idea of place resonates with North Carolinians, and illuminating why the state itself plays such a significant role in its own literature.

Authors from every region of North Carolina are represented, from the Appalachians and the Piedmont to the Outer Banks and places in between. Amazing Place showcases a mix of familiar favorites and newer voices, expressing in their own words how North Carolina shapes the literature of its people.

Contributors include Rosecrans Baldwin, Will Blythe, Belle Boggs, Fred Chappell, Jan DeBlieu, Pamela Duncan, Clyde Edgerton, Ben Fountain, Marianne Gingher, Judy Goldman, Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Randall Kenan, Jill McCorkle, Michael McFee, Lydia Millet, Robert Morgan, Jenny Offill, Michael Parker, Bland Simpson, Lee Smith, Wells Tower, and Monique Truong.

Review Quotes

"A delightful book that should please anyone who loves North Carolina and literature. . . . Amazing Place is amazingly good and a pleasure to read."-- News & Record

"Draw[s] from a deep literary well. . . . What emerges as strongly as the authors' North Carolina sensibilities is their connection to the landscape."--News & Observer

"Gingher has put together a collection of writers any state would be proud of." -- O. Henry Magazine

"Stories as varied as the state's geography and arranged that way, from the mountains to the Piedmont to the coast." -- Associated Press

About the Author

Marianne Gingher is professor of English and comparative literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and editor of Long Story Short: Flash Fiction by Sixty-Five of North Carolina's Finest Writers.