Grove Atlantic

This national bestseller from celebrated novelist and memoirist Dani Shapiro is an intimate and eloquent companion to living a creative life. Through a blend of memoir, meditation on the artistic process, and advice on craft, Shapiro offers her gift to writers everywhere: a guide of hard-won wisdom and advice for staying the course. In the ten years since the first edition, Still Writing has become a mainstay of creative writing classes as well as a lodestar for writers just starting out, and above all, an indispensable almanac for modern writers.

Shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize

"A hypnotic and electrifying Irish tale that transcends country, transcends time." ?Lily King, New York Times bestselling author of Writers & Lovers

Small Things Like These is award-winning author Claire Keegan's landmark new novel, a tale of one man's courage and a remarkable portrait of love and family

It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.

An international bestseller, Small Things Like These is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism, and empathy from one of our most critically lauded and iconic writers.

Edward Lear made the form popular for children, and Anon wrote the great dirty limericks, and Garrison Keillor does both while pushing the limerick envelope. E.g.

Here is a yawp for old Walt
Whitman, who's well worth his salt
Though sometimes he'll slip
And just let her rip
And say: "Camerados! What is this blade of grass? Who am I?
Who are you?" And you have to say HALT.

Of course he deals in the vulgar. And the semi-salacious:

Chopin wrote a lovely etude
That, when performed in the nude
By a mademoiselle
Who plays fairly well
Can certainly uplift the mood.

Many are educational, including his 26-limerick abecedary for English majors. And also:

The Confederate general Bob E. Lee
Committed treason quite freely
And General Grant
Beat him up cause you can't
Attack federal troops...I mean really.
He's written limericks in honor of friends, members of the New York Philharmonic, his daughter's teachers, a quintuple for Emily Dickinson, and one for his ophthalmologist.

My eye surgeon, good Dr. Khanna,
Looked through her eyepiece down on a
Novelist's retina
Who thought he was gettin' a
Vision of the blessed Madonna.

Woven through the verses are terse reflections on daily life, work, faith, and the old man of St. Paul whose office was a toilet stall.