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A Southern University Town in Prose & Poetry
Introduction by Daniel Wallace
240 pages, $16.50
Introduction by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Behind the Scenes: or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White Housewas first published in 1868 and is considered one of the most candid and poignant slave narratives. Author Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley writes about her teenage years, working as a slave for the Rev. Robert Burwell in Hillsborough, NC. He is thought by many historians to have been Keckley’s half-brother. The Burwells had twelve children and ran an academy for girls. She writes about mistreatment and violence visited upon her by Rev. and Mrs. Burwell, and the unwelcome sexual advances and eventual rape by one of the town’s white citizens. After Keckley gave birth to a son, she and her baby were sent to live with Burwell’s sister.
Born into slavery, Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley endured untold hardships at the hands of her master and half-brother Robert Burwell in Hillsborough, North Carolina. She eventually purchased freedom for herself and that of her son in the 1850s and is now remembered as an entrepreneur, fashion designer, abolitionist, educator, writer, and community activist. Self-reliant and educated, Keckley used her dressmaking skills to set up a successful business in the pre-Civil War Washington D.C., where she became the modiste of choice for many of the most fashionable women in the nation’s capital. Her talents and enterprising nature eventually led her to become seamstress to Mary Todd Lincoln and confidante to both Mary and Abraham Lincoln. After the assassination of President Lincoln, Keckley’s friendship with Mary Todd Lincoln eventually shifted into one of caretaker, as the former first lady’s financial troubles mounted and her mental health declined. In an effort to buoy their financial fortunes and to balance Lincoln’s battered public image, Keckley wrote Behind the Scenes: or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the While House. It is considered both a slave narrative and, in the words of historian Williams Andrews, “the first major text to represent the interests and aims of this nascent African American leadership class the postwar era.”
The Port City in Prose & Poetry
Introduction by Celia Rivenbark
27 Views of Wilmington: The Port City in Prose & Poetry showcases the literary life of one of North Carolina’s most popular cities. Twenty-seven Wilmington authors and poets contribute their “views” to this local anthology, capturing the city, both present and past. They offer a broad and varied picture of the Port City—from its natural beauty to its influx of newcomers to its efforts to come to terms with its past racial violence to personal histories woven into the fabric of the community.
National best-selling humorist Celia Rivenbark writes the introduction, and among the contributors are John Jeremiah Sullivan, Karen Bender, Jason Mott, Nan Graham, Rhonda Bellamy, Emily Louise Smith, Philip Gerard, Susan Block, Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams, Bertha Boyd Todd, Michael White, and many others.
“At the end of the day,” writes Rivenbark, “when the sunsets on the river or salt marsh attain a shade of pink-gold that only filmmakers whose Kickstarter campaigns have done very well seem to get just right, Wilmington’s s charm lies in its oddball blend of old and new, rural and urban, chic and casual.”
Contributors:
Celia Rivenbark
Sheila Webster Boneham
Nan Graham
Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams
Marlon Moore
Philip Gerard
Susan T. Block
Gwenyfar
Melodie Homer
Wiley Cash
Rhonda Bellamy
Jason Mott
Kevin Maurer
Bertha Boykin Todd
Dana Sachs
Virginia Holman
John Jeremiah Sullivan
Emily Louise Smith
Ashley Wahl
Michael White
Karen E. Bender
Emily A. Colin
James Leutze
Jean Jones
Wendy Brenner
Robert Anthony Siegel
Daniel Norris
Jason Frye
The City of Oaks in Prose & Poetry
Introduction by Wilton Barnhardt
220 pages, $15.95
A Southern Mountain Town in Prose & Poetry
Introduction by Rob Neufeld
220 pages, $15.95
The Intermingling of Fishing and Writing in a Novelist's Life
by Craig Nova
Foreword by Ann Beattie
176 pages, $15.95
Ecologically Designed Gardens for Drought, Deluge & Everything in Between
by Helen Kraus & Anne Spafford
Four color, 144 pages, $19.95
The True Story of a Southern Belle & a Yankee General
by Suzy Barile
256 pages, $16.95
The Elizabeth Keckley Reader: Volume One, edited by Sheila Smith McKoy offers a collection of essays and other works inspired by the life of Elizabeth Keckley, a slave in Hillsborough, North Carolina, who eventually bought her freedom. She became a noted seamstress in Civil War-era Washington DC, and was most famously the confidante of Mary Lincoln. Keckley s memoir, Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House is considered one of the seminal narratives of mid-19th century African American women. Scholar Sheila Smith McKoy assembles a wide variety of works published about Keckley. The Elizabeth Keckley Reader examines her life as a determined woman who overcame the horrors of the institution of slavery to become a successful entrepreneur, community leader, educator, author, and friend to the First Lady of the United States. In essays, articles and creative works, Keckley is viewed through the lens of entrepreneur, advocate, civic leader, educator, author, as well as a former slave. The comprehensive volume illuminates the life and work of this remarkable 19th-century African American woman.
Historic Dependencies and Landscapes in a Small Southern Town