About this item
Whether pulled from the folds of memory, channeled through the icons of Greek mythology and Roman Catholicism, or filtered through the lens of pop culture, Sonja Livingston’s Queen of the Fall considers the lives of women. Exploring the legacies of those she has crossed paths with in life and in the larger culture, Livingston weaves together strands of memory with richly imagined vignettes to explore becoming a woman in late 1980s and early 1990s America.Along the way, the award-winning memoirist brings us face-to-face with herself as an inner-city girl—trying to imagine a horizon beyond poverty, fearful of her fertility and the limiting arc of teenage pregnancy. Livingston looks at the lives of those she’s known: friends who’ve gotten themselves into “trouble” and disappeared never to be heard from again, girls who tell their school counselor small lies out of necessity and pain, and a mother whose fruitfulness seems, at times, biblical.
About the Author
An award-winning essayist, Sonja Livingston's writing has earned a NYFA Fellowship in Nonfiction Literature, an Iowa Review Award, and an AWP Book Award for her first book, Ghostbread, which has been used in classrooms around the country. She's received grants from the Vermont Studio Center and the Deming Fund for Women. Her writing has appeared in several textbooks on writing, as well as in many literary journals and anthologies.
Sonja teaches creative writing in the MFA Program at the University of Memphis.
