Laura Long has received a James Michener Fellowship, James River Writers Award, Donald Barthelme Fellowship, PEN-Texas Award, Virginia Center for Creative Arts fellowships, and has published in magazines including The Southern Reviewand Shenandoah. She is the author of two books of poems, Imagine a Door and The Eye of Caroline Herschel: A Life in Poems. She teaches at Lynchburg College in Virginia, USA and has taught in numerous community and university settings in Austin, Houston, and far west Texas.
"Out of Peel Tree is a book of glorious surprises. The unexpected
in image and in character, in turns of phrase and turns of plot,
awakens its readers not just to fresh perspectives, but even to
fresh forms of consciousness. Vivid, sonorous, and wise."
Ann Pancake is the author of Given Ground, a collection of short
stories and a novel, Strange As This Weather Has Been.
"Out of Peel Tree is the perfect title for this wonderfully
unpredictable-collection of restless souls who've been shaken loose
from their roots. Laura Long moves fluently through many moods,
from poignant and yielding to harsh and bitter and back again. She
honors the fragile connections between the members of this farflung
family and the people they love (and often leave), and beautifully
calibrates the dramas of childhood, old age and the fraught years
in between."
Rosellen Brown, author of Before and After and Half a Heart, has
published novels, stories, poetry. Her book Cora Fry's Pillow Book
is a sequence of poems about a woman's life in small-town New
Hampshire.
"Aside from the gorgeous writing and deeply compelling characters,
what I especially value about Laura Long's Out of Peel Tree is its
honoring both the region and the literature out of which it
springs, at the same time it brilliantly offers a new vision and
shines a light on the path ahead. This is a book to be enjoyed
immediately and cherished for years to come."
David Huddle, author of Only the Little Bone and The Story of a
Million Years
"In an elaborate mosaic that is both moving and uplifting, Out of
Peel Tree tells the story of three generations of West Virginia
women and their survival against the odds. This vivid, compact work
is akin to an unforgiving family portrait that reveals
everything--warts and all."
Clifford Garstang, author of What the Zhang Boys Know and 2013
recipient of the Library of Virginia Literary Award for
Fiction.
"Laura Long has eyes like no other. The world she sees has more
dimensions than the mundane 3-D world the rest of us inhabit. In
her world even dry leaves and red tomatoes and postcards are
sentient."
Marie Manilla, author of The Patron Saint of Ugly and Still Life
with Plums
"Laura Long writes with such tenderness for her characters, for
place, for the natural world. The images shimmer and the links
delight. Out of Peel Tree is tatted into the finest lace--delicate,
seamless, and strong. Is it any wonder this is a poet's novel?"
Sara Pritchard, author of Help Wanted: Female and Crackpots "Long
is sensitive to the details of life and people. Her themes,
characterizations, and story are built on a foundation of symbolism
and imagery. She transforms the everyday--butter clogging bread,
the shaking of cornflakes, an African Violet plant, wrinkles--into
meaning. . . .This kind of layered writing creates the feeling that
every word is important. Meaning reveals itself bit by bit, and the
book invites a slower reading."
Alicia Sondhi, ForeWord Reviews
"Like one of her many remarkable characters, Laura Long has the
imaginative capacity to "be, in fleeting moments, anything she
sees" and she enables the reader to realize, right along with her,
the textures of magical realities in a slow, lovely dream:
glass-bottomed boats, milagro candles, the feel of the color
green--and most of all, the sorrows and joys of an extended
Appalachian family in its stunning American diaspora. Out of Peel
Tree offers an indelible cultural portrait and a unique literary
experience. Laura Long is an astonishing writer."
Tracy Daugherty is the author of four novels, five short story
collections, and biographies of Donald Barthelme and Joseph Heller.
He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the
Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation.
"This is prose as joyful and complex as the joy it describes.
Expect to levitate along with the characters."
Leigh Newman, Oprah's Book Club 2.0 "Out of Peel Tree is an amazing
book, alive with the enchantments of language and perception.
Through one family's experience of love, luck, and the meaning of
home, Laura Long's vibrant prose turns barebones, slim-hope
existence into something capacious, endowing her characters and
their adventures with richness and depth."
Daphne Kalotay, award-winning author of Sight Reading and Russian
Winter
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