We craft and tell stories because we’ve stood on the uncertain edge between the waking world and our imagination, between enchantment and fear. And we remember other stories that help us build our own stories, scraps of lumber and fragments of narrative we gather together to make stories for ourselves.

Poetry Book: Sister Fox’s Field Guide to the Writing Life, by Jane Yolen

Sister Fox CoverI’m delighted to be able to announce the release of the next title in our series of mythic arts books. Sister Fox’s Field Guide to the Writing Life is a new collection of poems by the one and only Jane Yolen. This is an unnumbered, limited edition hardback. We are accepting pre-orders from now through 31 October 2013, and we will only print as many copies as have been ordered. Estimated delivery is November 2013. Full ordering information is here. You don’t want to miss this book, so I suggest ordering it sooner than later.

This is a beautiful collection, and we’re proud to be publishing it. Sister Fox’s Field Guide to the Writing Life showcases that remarkable, magical range of fairy tales, mythic arts, writerly wisdom, and plain good sense that hallmarks Yolen’s work. But, as LeVar taught us to say, don’t take my word for it:

‘Reading Sister Fox was like watching a master magician explain exactly how each trick is planned and executed during their performance. And even though you have been shown the secrets; peeked behind the curtain and seen the ribs and blood and sawdust of craft, you can’t help but marvel and delight in the skill and then, blinking ever so briefly, the moment of magic happens, and your heart fills with wonder and astonishment. Jane Yolen—wordsmith—has written art disguised as Instruction Manual.’

Richard Michelson, Poet Laureate of Northampton, Mass.

‘Jane Yolen, beloved by generations of young readers, invites us all in this beautiful, generous book to be: “You at your leisure now reading my heart.” Her poems about the writing life “crack open the common world | like a walnut struck with a hammer.” She does not speak “the coarse, cruel, easy lies | a poet must never speak” because “Truth sits uneasy on any horse | [. . .] breathing in the dust, | and like God, breathing out life.” This is familiar Yolen magic: terror and delight, breathing out this time poems for grown-up readers and a wise “field guide” for writers.’

Pat Schneider, Author of How the Light Gets In: Writing as a Spiritual Practice

 


Reader Comments

  1. I can’t wait to see it published as the story as well as the illustration look absolutely amazing. (esp the book with a head of bird, that’s genius.)

  2. Hi Tracy — This was a limited edition, so we only printed as many as were ordered. We don’t have any extras right now.

    However, if you’re able to get to one of Jane Yolen’s public readings or signing events, she’ll have a few copies for sale.

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