Charlottesville Words

Two Readings/Book Signings at New Dominion Bookshop:

Wednesday, October 1 at 5:30 PM: Lisa Williams, Woman Reading to the Sea

Thursday, October 2 at 5:30 PM: Domnica Radulescu, Train to Trieste

New Dominion Bookshop will host a reading and book-signing
by Lisa Williams who will present selections
from her new book of poetry,
Woman Reading to the Sea
Wednesday, October 1, 2008 at 5:30 PM

Selected by Joyce Carol Oates as Winner of the 2007 Barnard Women Poets Prize

“Woman Reading to the Sea contains poems of arresting intelligence, precision, and beauty,” wrote Joyce Carol Oates, in selecting Lisa Williams’ tremendous second book as the winner of the 2007 Barnard Women Poets Prize.

Comparing the “startling subtlety” of her work to Emily Dickinson, Oates praises Williams’ audacity and imagination, as she takes the reader “into eerily imagined worlds — the interior of a jellyfish, the interior of a glacier.” Williams, Oates writes, “beguiles us with the most seductive of poetic possibilities — that we might be absorbed in into the consciousness of the beautiful and inarticulate world of nature.”

A profoundly lyrical work that weaves nature, childhood, the metaphysical, and mythology into one symphony, Woman Reading to the Sea displays Lisa Williams’ facility with language, her bold confidence in departures and risk-taking. With poems that sort through the stuff of life — and worlds far beyond — Williams offers us an immensely enjoyable collection that elevates her into the top tier of lyric poets today.

The Barnard Women Poets Prize, sponsored by the English department at Barnard College, is given bi-annually for an exceptional second collection of poems written by an American woman. The winning poet receives an honorarium, and her manuscript is published by W.W. Norton & Company.

“Extraordinary.” — Gregory Orr

Lisa Williams is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Virginia. She worked as senior editor for William McDonough and his environmental consulting firm, McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry, from 1996-2001. Her work with McDonough and his partner, Michael Braungart, on their environmental book, Cradle to Cradle (North Point Press, 2002) inspired poems in her new volume of poetry, which celebrates cosmic and ecological development and the creative processes of nature. Williams’ work with the two is also mentioned in Women in Green: Voices of Sustainable Design (Ecotone Publishing, 2008).

A winner of the Rome Prize in literature (2004), Williams has had poems on Poetry Daily, and in Poetry, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Best American Erotic Poems: 1800 to the Present. Her first book of poems is The Hammered Dulcimer (1998).

New Dominion Bookshop will host a reading and book-signing
by Domnica Radulescu who will present selections
from her debut novel,
Train to Trieste
Thursday, October 2, 2008 at 5:30 PM

An incandescent love story — a thrilling debut novel — that moves from Romania to America, from the Carpathian Mountains to Chicago, from totalitarianism to freedom, and from passionate infatuation to profound understanding.

In the summer of 1977, seventeen-year-old Mona Manoliu falls in love with Mihai, a mysterious boy who lives in the romantic mountain city where she spends her summers. She can think of nothing and no one else. But life in Romania under Nicolae Ceauşescu is difficult. Hunger and paranoia infect everyone; fear, too. And one day, Mona sees Mihai wearing the black leather jacket favored by the secret police. Could he be one of them? As food shortages worsen, as more and more of her loved ones disappear in “accidents,” Mona comes to understand that she must leave Romania. She escapes in secret — narrowly avoiding the police — through Yugoslavia to Italy, and then, to Chicago. But she leaves without saying a final good-bye to Mihai. And though she struggles to bury her longing for the past — she becomes a doctoral student, marries, has children — she finds herself compelled to return to her country, determined to learn the truth about her one great love.

Seductive, suspenseful, intensely evocative, and told in an astonishingly original, poetic voice, Train to Trieste announces “a remarkable writer enriching American letters with her Romanian perspective. We are lucky to call her ours.” — Sandra Cisneros

“True love is hard to find, but it’s priceless–a lesson it takes feisty and vivacious Mona Manoliu decades to learn. A 17-year-old student in late 1970s Romania, Mona has fallen hard for the charismatic Mihai, whom she meets when summering with her family in the foothills of the Carpathians. Back home in Bucharest, her father pursues clandestine activities, and the family barely eats, but Mona is starry-eyed about Mihai–until she sees him in a black leather jacket, the favored outfit of the secret police, and encounters a crazed woman who asks her whether she really knows who he is. Then her family persuades her to flee to the West, and she’s off to America via Italy via Bucharest. Years later, Mona returns to Romania and discovers the truth about Mihai–a revelation that, against all expectations, is both startling and satisfying. . . . Engaging, evocative, intensely sensual, and sharply perceptive, conveying both the horrors of the Ceausescu regime and the ironies of Mona’s experiences in America. A strong first novel.”
— Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Domnica Radulescu was born in Romania and came to the United States in 1983. She is a professor of Romance languages and literature and of women’s studies at Washington and Lee University. She has written and edited books and scholarly articles on European literature and theater, and is the founding director of the National Symposium of Theater in Academe. She lives in Lexington, Virginia, with her two sons.