Biofiction: An Introduction provides readers with the history, origins, evolution, and legitimization of biofiction, suggesting potential lines of inquiry, exploring criticisms of the literary form, and modeling the process of analyzing and interpreting individual texts. Written for undergraduate and graduate students, this volume combines comprehensive coverage of the core foundations of biofiction with contemporary and lively debates within the subject. The volume aims to confro...

Shows how after the Nazis came to power, prominent exile writers used biofiction to provide readers with a means of identifying root causes of political oppression.There were biofictions before the 20th century, but the literary form surged in the 1930s, especially among writers who fled Europe to escape the Nazis. What would be the best way to challenge and counteract the Nazis' oppressive political agenda? This was a question those writers sought to answer. And a...

Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, and it has become a dominant literary form over the last 35 years. What has not yet been scholarly acknowledged or documented is that the Irish played a crucial role in the origins, evolution, rise, and now dominance of biofiction.Michael Lackey first examines the groundbreaking biofictions that Oscar Wilde and George Moore authored in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as well as the best bi...

Jay Parini (b. 1948) is best known for his novel about Leo Tolstoy's last year, The Last Station, which has been translated into more than twenty-five languages and made into a Hollywood film. But he has also published numerous volumes of poetry; biographies of William Faulkner, Robert Frost, and John Steinbeck; novels; and literary and cultural criticism. This book contains the most important interviews with the former Guggenheim fellow; former Fowler Hamilton Fellow at Christ Ch...

Joanna Scott (b. 1960) has been one of America’s leading writers since the 1990s. Both critically acclaimed and winner of numerous prestigious awards, Scott’s unique and probing vision and masterful writing has inspired readers to adjust their perceptions of life and of themselves. Her fiction jolts and illuminates, frequently exposing the degree to which the perverse is natural and the ordinary is twisted and demented.Conversations with Joanna Scott presents eighteen inte...

In the late sixties and early seventies, black separatist movements were sweeping across the United States. This was the era of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael's and Charles Hamilton's Black Power, and Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice. In 1969 a group of distinguished African American intellectuals met at Haverford College in order to devise strategies to dissuade young blacks from adopting a separatist political agenda. The participants included...

Biofiction, defined as literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, first became popular in the 1930s, but over the last forty years it has become a dominant literary form. Prominent writers such as J.M. Coetzee, Joyce Carol Oates, Russell Banks, Julia Alvarez, Peter Carey, Hilary Mantel, Colm Tóibín, Anne Enright, Colum McCann, and Michael Cunningham have authored spectacular biographical novels which have won some of the world’s most prestigious awards for fic...

Billy Budd: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience! In 1797, young Billy Budd is impressed into naval service. It is a perilous time for a British Royal Navy still reeling from mutinies and marauding French ships. When Billy is forcibly transferred to HMS Bellipotent, he evokes the wrath of John Claggart, the ship's Master-at-arms. Claggart falsely accuses Billy of conspiracy to mutiny, a charge that will have a profound effect on the ...

In Manhattan, an elderly lawyer's business is growing. Having two scriveners in his employ, the lawyer advertises for a third to meet demand. Enter Bartleby, a glum albeit quality scrivener. However, the lawyer quickly discovers that something is off with his new employee. When asked to perform any duties outside of copywriting, Bartleby responds with a canned 'I would prefer not to.' Soon Bartleby is living at the office and performing less and less at work. Finally fed up with his strang...

Ten years after the events of Riders of the Purple Sage, John Shefford, a disillusioned preacher from Illinois travels to Arizona and takes refuge in a village controlled by polygamist Mormons hiding from the federal government. It's there Shefford learns the story of Fay Larkin: years ago, the infant Fay, along with Jane Withersteen and a gunslinger known as Lassiter, were trapped in Surprise Valley. Intrigued, Shefford decides to track Fay down. Originally published under the title The R...

Jurgis Rudkus, an impoverished Lithuanian immigrant, takes a lowly job at Brown's slaughterhouse to support his young wife and their relatives. Once admiring America for its potential, Rudkus has found opportunities to be too far out of his reach. After being evicted, Rudkus is living in a slum and deeply in debt - unable to support his family. As he attempts to make ends meet, the oppressive working conditions and crippling poverty begin to take a toll on Rudkus and his family.

In 1797, young Billy Budd is impressed into naval service. It is a perilous time for a British Royal Navy still reeling from mutinies and marauding French ships. When Billy is forcibly transferred to HMS Bellipotent, he evokes the wrath of John Claggart, the ship's Master-at-arms. Claggart falsely accuses Billy of conspiracy to mutiny, a charge that will have a profound effect on the fates of both seamen.