In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle
In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle

Author: Madeleine Blais

Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

Published: 2017-07-11

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 0802193420

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“Beautifully written . . . A celebration of girls and athletics.” The national bestselling sports classic from a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist (USA Today). Expanded and updated with a new epilogue, Madeleine Blais’ book tells the story of a season in the life of the Amherst Lady Hurricanes, a girls’ high school basketball team from the Western Massachusetts college town. The Hurricanes were a talented team with a near-perfect record, but for five straight years, when it came to the crunch of the playoffs, they somehow lacked the desire to go all the way. Now, led by senior guards Jen Pariseau, a three-point specialist, and Jamila Wideman, an All-American phenom, this was the year to prove themselves. It was a season to test their passion for the sport and their loyalty to each other, and a chance to discover who they really were. As an off-season of summer jobs and basketball camps turns to fall, as students arrive and the games begin, Blais charts the ups and downs of the team and paints a portrait of the wider Amherst community, which comes to revel in the athletic exploits of their girls. Finally, a women’s team was getting the attention they deserve. And the Hurricanes were richly deserving; these teenage girls are fierce and funny, smart and ambitious, and they are the heart of this gripping book. “Extraordinary.” —The Baltimore Sun “A picture of a changing period in American sports history, when a town rallied around its female athletes in a way that had previously been reserved for males.” —Publishers Weekly

Louise: Amended
Louise: Amended

Author: Louise Krug

Publisher: Catapult

Published: 2012-04-24

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1936787040

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A young woman recently relocated to California with dreams of becoming a journalist is stricken with a brain trauma and must work to regain her independence in this "must read" memoir (Mary Karr, author of The Liar's Club) "Having just graduated from college, Krug and her dreamy French boyfriend, Claude (a man given to wearing his button–down shirts buttoned halfway up), leave the flatlands of Kansas for Santa Barbara, California—there, Krug finds a reporting job covering high society 'gardens, weddings, and pets,' and Claude gets a gig with a local paper. Young, in love, gainfully employed, and living close to the coast, post–collegiate life couldn't be better—day after day 'they drink Mexican beer and wear bathing suits indoors. They do drugs and wander through organic markets, spotting celebrities.' But just weeks after settling in, Krug suffers a 'severe' cavernous angioma in her brain. She gets dizzy, she can't walk, and it soon becomes clear that brain surgery is inevitable, and life will never be the same. In gracefully stark prose, Krug narrates in the third person the implosion of what should've been her gilded life, the sad and prolonged dissolution of her relationship with Claude, and her transformation from 'the kind of girl other girls only pretended to like' to a wife, mother, and PhD candidate back in Kansas. Interspersed throughout are fictional imaginings of the perspectives of her loved ones as she endures numerous surgeries and years of physically and emotionally excruciating rehab. Supplemented with facsimiles of the 'Illustrated Facial Exercises' she used to work damaged muscles, as well as other medical documents, Krug's story is an immediate, unsparing, and beautifully rendered account of loss and recovery. —Publishers Weekly, starred review

The Heart is an Instrument
The Heart is an Instrument

Author: Madeleine Blais

Publisher:

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13:

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Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Madeleine Blais is perhaps best known for her insightful essays chronicling the experiences of the disadvantaged and dispossessed members of our society. This volume gathers fifteen of her most memorable essays, vivid portraits that speak to the realities of contemporary American experience.

To the New Owners
To the New Owners

Author: Madeleine Blais

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press

Published: 2017-07-04

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 0802189091

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The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist “gives a familial face to the mystique of Martha’s Vineyard” in a memoir with “gentle humor and . . . elegiac sweetness” (Kirkus Reviews). A National Book Critics Circle Award finalist In the 1970s, Madeleine Blais’s in-laws purchased a vacation house on Martha’s Vineyard. A little more than two miles down a dirt road, it had no electricity or modern plumbing, the roof leaked, and mice had invaded the walls. It was perfect. Sitting on Tisbury Great Pond—well-stocked with delicious oysters and crab—the house faced the ocean and the sky. Though improvements were made, the ethos remained the same: no heat, television, or telephone. Instead, there were countless hours at the beach, meals cooked and savored with friends, nights talking under the stars, until, in 2014, the house was sold. To the New Owners is Madeleine Blais’s “witty and charming . . . deeply felt memoir” of this house, and of the Vineyard itself, from the history of the island and its famous visitors, to the ferry, the pie shops, the quirky charms and customs, and the abundant natural beauty. But more than that, this is an elegy for a special place—a retreat that held the intimate history of her family (The National Book Review).

Queen of the Court
Queen of the Court

Author: Madeleine Blais

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press

Published: 2023-08-15

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0802165745

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From the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Madeleine Blais, the dramatic and colorful story of legendary tennis star and international celebrity, Alice Marble In August 1939, Alice Marble graced the cover of Life magazine, photographed by the famed Alfred Eisenstaedt. She was a glamorous worldwide celebrity, having that year won singles, women’s doubles, and mixed doubles tennis titles at both Wimbledon and the US Open, then an unprecedented feat. Yet today one of America’s greatest female athletes and most charismatic characters is largely forgotten. Queen of the Court places her back on center stage. Born in 1913, Marble grew up in San Francisco; her favorite sport, baseball. Given a tennis racket at age 13, she took to the sport immediately, rising to the top with a powerful, aggressive serve-and-volley style unseen in women’s tennis. A champion at the height of her fame in the late 1930s, she also designed a clothing line in the off-season and sang as a performer in the Sert Room of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York to rave reviews. World War II derailed her amateur tennis career, but her life off the court was, if anything, even more eventful. She wrote a series of short books about famous women. She turned professional and joined a pro tour during the War, entertaining and inspiring soldiers and civilians alike. Ever glamorous and connected, she had a part in the 1952 Tracy and Hepburn movie Pat and Mike, and she played tennis with the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Marlene Dietrich, and her great friends, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. However, perhaps her greatest legacy lies in her successful efforts, working largely alone, to persuade the all-white US Lawn Tennis Association to change its policy and allow African American star Althea Gibson to compete for the US championship in 1950, thereby breaking tennis’s color barrier. In two memoirs, Marble also showed herself to be an at-times unreliable narrator of her own life, which Madeleine Blais navigates skillfully, especially Marble’s dramatic claims of having been a spy during World War II. In Queen of the Court, the author of the bestselling In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle recaptures a glittering life story.

College Admissions Cracked
College Admissions Cracked

Author: Jill Margaret Shulman

Publisher: Little, Brown Spark

Published: 2019-08-06

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 0316420549

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How to help your kid navigate the college admissions process -- from scheduling standardized tests to writing essays -- month by month, girlfriend's-guide style. So, your child is a high school junior. You've heard other parents with kids older than yours whisper the word "college" like it was a terminal disease. You've seen their taut, maniacal grins as they try to hold it together. The process of weathering and conquering the college admissions process with a teenager is a daunting affair for many. Advice will pour in through friends, your child's guidance counselor, and your mother's neighbor's cousin. Thankfully, Jill Margaret Shulman, a college admissions coach, application evaluator, college writing instructor, essayist, author, and empathetic parent, is here to be your fiercest ally. She'll guide you through the entire crazy ritual that college admissions has become, month by month, breath by deep, cleansing breath, until you drop your kid off at college where she will ignore your phone calls and texts. Come as you are -- whether chill or roiling with anxiety -- and Shulman, along with a platoon of experts and fellow parents, will help you maintain your strength and sense of self-worth, so easily lost somewhere between your teenager's screaming, "I hate you! You're ruining my life!" and typing your credit card number into the College Board's website for the twentieth time. You've got college admissions cracked, and now, this book has got your back.

Winning Sounds Like This
Winning Sounds Like This

Author: Wayne Coffey

Publisher: Three Rivers Press (CA)

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13:

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Chronicles the 1999-2000 season of the women's basketball team at Gallaudet University, profiling the team's players and coaches, and recounting the wins and losses.

A Frozen Woman
A Frozen Woman

Author: Annie Ernaux

Publisher: Seven Stories Press

Published: 2020-05-19

Total Pages: 87

ISBN-13: 1609802209

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WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE A Frozen Woman charts Ernaux's teenage awakening, and then the parallel progression of her desire to be desirable and her ambition to fulfill herself in her chosen profession - with the inevitable conflict between the two. And then she is 30 years old, a teacher married to an executive, mother of two infant sons. She looks after their nice apartment, raises her children. And yet, like millions of other women, she has felt her enthusiasm and curiosity, her strength and her happiness, slowly ebb under the weight of her daily routine. The very condition that everyone around her seems to consider normal and admirable for a woman is killing her. While each of Ernaux's books contain an autobiographical element, A Frozen Woman, one of Ernaux's early works, concentrates the spotlight piercingly on Annie herself. Mixing affection, rage and bitterness, A Frozen Woman shows us Ernaux's developing art when she still relied on traditional narrative, before the shortened form emerged that has since become her trademark.

Hullmetal Girls
Hullmetal Girls

Author: Emily Skrutskie

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Published: 2018-07-17

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1524770213

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From the author of Bonds of Brass, don't miss Hullmetal Girls, which NPR calls "a little Ender's Game, a little Hunger Games, [and] a little Battlestar Gallactica." Aisha Un-Haad would do anything for her family. When her brother contracts a plague, she knows her janitor's salary isn't enough to fund his treatment. So she volunteers to become a Scela, a mechanically enhanced soldier sworn to protect and serve the governing body of the Fleet, the collective of starships they call home. If Aisha can survive the harrowing modifications and earn an elite place in the Scela ranks, she may be able to save her brother. Key Tanaka awakens in a Scela body with only hazy memories of her life before. She knows she's from the privileged end of the Fleet, but she has no recollection of why she chose to give up a life of luxury to become a hulking cyborg soldier. If she can make it through the training, she might have a shot at recovering her missing past. In a unit of new recruits vying for top placement, Aisha's and Key's paths collide, and the two must learn to work together--a tall order for girls from opposite ends of the Fleet. But a rebellion is stirring, pitting those who yearn for independence from the Fleet against a government struggling to maintian unity. With violence brewing and dark secrets surfacing, Aisha and Key find themselves questioning their loyalties. They will have to put aside their differences, though, if they want to keep humanity from tearing itself apart. A Boston Globe Best Book of the Year A Paste Best Book of the Year “Filled with badass girls and epic adventures…this one's guaranteed to take you on a ride.”— Buzzfeed "A captivating sci-fi adventure that will make you fall madly for Skrutskie's fabulous writing, if you haven't already. [Perfect] for fans of: Cindy Pon (Want) and Pierce Brown (Red Rising)."-- Paste "A book you will devour in one sitting, Hullmetal Girls is not to be missed!"—Beth Revis, New York Times bestselling author of A World Without You and Across the Universe "Hullmetal Girls has everything I love in a space opera: deep faith, high stakes, endless questions about humanity, and a cast that shows the best (and less-best) of what we might become." -E.K. Johnston, #1 New York Times bestselling author of That Inevitable Victorian Thing ★ "Unexpected and clever...A great science fiction story."--VOYA, Starred Review "An engaging narrative with a complex cast that intersects race, sexual identity, religion, and class."--Kirkus Reviews

Intimate Journalism
Intimate Journalism

Author: Walt Harrington

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 1997-03-28

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 9780761905875

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An exemplary text for courses in feature writing, magazine, and literary journalism, Intimate Journalism introduces students to the cutting-edge art of combining traditional feature writing with deep journalistic inquiry. This collection of award-winning articles elevates human interest reporting to new heights in the literary journalism field. In a detailed and hands-on, practical primer on in-depth human reporting, editor Walt Harrington prefaces this outstanding collection by sharing the trade secrets from his 15 years as a staff writer for The Washington Post Magazine. Fifteen articles follow, each containing fascinating examples of evocative human reporting by some of the most artful journalists in America. Each article is followed by an invaluable afterword from each journalist describing how he or she conceptualized, reported and wrote their particular story. In this passionate and intense volume, Harrington gives journalists inspiration and guidance on how to turn ordinary life into extraordinary journalism A must for students and teachers of journalism, for budding magazine and newspaper writers, and for professional journalists who wish to be re-inspired by the superb reporting, distinctive writing, and sound advice found in this text.