Phyllis Moore and MSW at the Bridgeport, WV Library
Once again Ken and Linda gave us opera tickets-- astounding generosity-- and I can see how people love this whole thing-- the whole red and gold, the soft carpets, the vastness of the hall-- a world of its own, and hard to return to ordinary houses and newspapers on the kitchen table and the coffee pot not washed.
We saw Karita Matilla at the Metropolitan opera as Emilia Marky in Janacek's The Makropulous Case-- a "modern" (1928) opera, and Matilla was wonderful as the the three hundred year old diva who can't decide if she wants more life... (continued at Blogger...)
Praise for Out of the Mountains: 
New Pages called Out of the Mountains "full of engaging plot and rich characters. Strongly evocative of place."
Out of the Mountains was nominated for a Weatherford Award. For more information, click Here.
Booklist Praised Out of the Mountains : "Her characters possess a conversational familiarity, and the reader feels absorbed into the small community that is both distinctly Appalachian and markedly universal. This finely crafted collection is worth reading twice to discover all its intricacies and connections."
Praise for Re-Visions
The stories were so vivid and natural that after a while I forgot to think of them as based on actual classic myths and felt them alive in my modern world, real as any other stories. My favorite was the one about Lazarus (for the wonderful imagery about fire and moths and desire) --but so many engaged and moved me.
- Leora Skolkin-Smith, author of The Fragile Mistress
T.S. Eliot, in "Tradition and the Individual Talent," wrote that every new story or poem takes its place in the context of all the stories and poems that have ever been written. An ideal reader would have read them all, yet would bring fresh appreciation to each new work. The old stories -- "the tradition" -- would set up expectations about form and content that the new story would confirm or rebel against. And the new story in turn would make us read the old stories in new ways....Most of these eight stories are about women in pre-feminist times. Willis doesn't create 21st-century people and insert them into costume dramas, as pop novelists and Hollywood often do. These women remain embedded in the mental atmosphere of their own times and places. Yet she somehow makes us see them in ways the original stories never intended -- whether her heroine is the legendary storyteller Scheherezade, the slave girl Topsy, St. Augustine's teen-age concubine or Martha, the practical sister of Mary and Lazarus, who has to see that the house is clean and guests are fed when Jesus comes to work a miracle.
-- Michael Harris, author of The Chieu Hoi Saloon
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Special Price on Meredith Sue Willis's new book of stories from myths and other stories: Re-Visions. Regular Price $14.95 plus S&H now $13.00 plus S&H.
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Re-visions: Stories from Stories is a collection of spin-offs from myth, fiction, and the Bible. From a new look at Adam and Eve and why they left the Garden to a grown-up Topsy from Uncle Tom's Cabin to the confessions of SaintAugustine's concubine- each story offers a gloss on the original as well as insights into how we canlive today.
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