Description
Literary Nonfiction. "Joel Peckham's writing is essential reading for me. He's a contemporary whose work I need to read to understand the world I live in. His first collection, RESISTING ELEGY, hit me as a revelation because of its intimacy, its depth, and its unflinching honesty—not only with the reader, but with himself. There are very few people in the world willing to take such a terrifying journey into the essence of their own lives and far, far fewer with the skills to take us along with them. Peckham is one of those people and his voice guides us through a darkness we'd be too afraid to explore alone. And then there is the writing. Peckham's exquisite language does what writing is supposed to do—envelope you in a new universe and take you on a dramatic and emotional journey. His new collection, BODY MEMORY, continues what is now his hallmark: It explores the deeply personal and hard-to-articulate understandings of what it means to both have a body and also be one. His fears, his phobias, his frailties are all on display so we can better understand ourselves and what it means to be alive—and to be grateful to be alive—today."—Derek B. Miller
Author Bio
Joel B. Peckham, Jr., is an Assistant Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at Marshall University. A scholar of American Literature and a creative writer as well as a former Fulbright Scholar, his reviews, essays, scholarly articles, and poetry have been published in numerous journals, including American Literature, The Black Warrior Review, Brevity, The North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, River Teeth, The Southern Review, and The Sun. His work has also appeared in the anthologies Contemporary Poetry of New England (University Press of New England), Poets Against the War (Nation Press), and Every River on Earth: Writing from Appalachian Ohio (Ohio University Press). His most recent collections include his memoir, Resisting Elegy (Chicago Review Press, 2012) and two collections of poetry from Futurecycle Press: the chapbook Why Not Take All of Me: A Cycle of Poems on the Life and Music of Billie Holiday (2014) and the full-length collection, God's Bicycle (2015). He lives in Huntington WV with his wife Rachael, and son, Darius.
Author City: HUNTINGTON, WV USA