Press kit for Things No Longer There
Krieger press kit homepage | Press Release | Stories behind the Story | Excerpt | Author's bio | Author's photo | Author Appearances | Digital version of Things No Longer There | e-book | Audio book of Things No Longer There | Cover image for Web sites | Cover image for print publications | Reviews | For additional information | Susan Krieger's own Web site
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Things
No Longer There News for Immediate Release: April 15, 2005 The Power of Memory and the Meaning of Vision Things No Longer There: "This book is beautifully written, with vivid, compelling images that stayed with me."—Esther Rothblum, University of Vermont Things No Longer There is a lovingly crafted collection of personal stories
about the author's struggle toward enlightenment while losing
her eyesight. It is also about invisible landscapes—places
of the heart that linger long after they have disappeared from
the world outside. In these ten brief tales and one novella-length
intimate drama, Susan Krieger takes us on a series of adventures
in vision, a journey both inward and to various parts of the
country. We travel with her as she goes birdwatching before sunrise
in the New Mexico desert, learns to walk with a white cane, revisits
an old love, returns to a summer camp of her youth, and reflects
on the nature of blindness and sight. Susan Krieger, a sociologist and writer, teaches in the Program in Feminist Studies at Stanford University. Her previous books include The Family Silver: Essays on Relationships among Women; Social Science and the Self: Personal Essays on an Art Form; and The Mirror Dance: Identity in a Women's Community. Stories behind the Story Things No Longer There
Author Appearances Susan Krieger discussed print accessibility in a public talk at the Stanford Bookstore and at the Modern Times Bookstore in San Francisco in May of 2005, and will discuss this issue in upcoming radio programs and guest lectures. e-book An accessible e-book for the blind was released by the University of Wisconsin Press simultaneous with print publication in May 2005.
Audio book The UW Press is pleased to announce that an audio book version of Things No Longer There is now available as well. The audio book can be obtained on CD. Especially of interest to those losing their vision will be chapters 8, 9 and 10, which contain the author's stories of her own loss of sight. The book is read by a longtime reader of books for the blind who is now herself legally blind: From Track 2: Betty Risser's "Reader's
Note": Author Susan Krieger has recorded an introduction on the audiobook as well—Track 1. Both Krieger and Risser are available for radio program speaking engagements, where they may discuss the creation and use of alternative reading formats for the blind. For further information about the e-book and audio book, listen to an interview with the author on Tech Nation radio. Excerpt Excerpt from Chapter 1, "Things No Longer There" "I tend to give exact directions. A friend, noticing this once, told me about how her father gave directions: "You turn left at the corner where the big tree used to be in front of that house they tore down last year, then right in a few blocks where the pharmacy was, near the stoplight. The image of trees and buildings no longer standing in the midwestern town where my friend grew up, but that were still very present in her father's mind, has stayed with me for a long time, those absent features of the landscape more visible to me than many places I have seen. Perhaps that is because the missing elements were the only ones my friend told me about and because they had a compelling hold on her father's imagination, but more likely because I, too, am drawn to places no longer there, to imagined scenes, wished for experiences, to sad, sad feelings of longing for things past that never really occurred exactly as I have remembered them." Excerpt from Chapter 8, "Losing My Vision" "I am losing my eyesight. I am not sure if my vision loss will continue for a few years more or indefinitely. Already my visual world has changed....The blue irises I now look at in the spring on the hills that slope toward the ocean are blurred; I have to take out my binoculars to see them. I have to take out my binoculars at the beach to see the waves and to see any detail in the white foamy breakers. The large forms and colors of sand dunes and green meadows surround me as I walk on a path toward the beach. I sit in a crevice among the dunes surrounded by scattered clumps of low-lying white flowers, a garden of beauties I can barely see. I am going to have to grow accustomed to this new world I am in—if indeed it keeps being mine—and to find and delight in my place in it."Author's bio Susan Krieger, a sociologist and writer, teaches in the Program in Feminist Studies at Stanford University. Her previous books include The Family Silver: Essays on Relationships among Women; Social Science and the Self: Personal Essays on an Art Form; and The Mirror Dance: Identity in a Women's Community. Reviews "Even before Krieger began losing her vision to a rare condition known as birdshot retinochoroidopathy, she had become fascinated by the idea that nothing remains as we recall it. When revisiting places long remembered, everyone, she says, sees that those places look vastly different. Trees have grown, burned, or been cut down. People are older. Structures have been built, remodeled, or demolished. Birds that once flocked to a place have flown to new, more hospitable locales. She began compiling written snapshots, word pictures that captured exactly how things appeared to her at selected moments in time. Her verbal imagery borders on the poetic as she recollects, among other things, her childhood summer camp, saving a neighborhood tree, and witnessing the aftermath of a forest fire. That she is lesbian is more than an overriding leitmotif in her reminiscences, which incorporate a novella-length memoir about a special relationship. Her sexual identity becomes a presence, as fleshed-out as those other presences, the national park, the Pacific seashore, and the New Mexico desert." —Donna Chavez, Booklist "The 11 tales that make up her current memoir—which concludes with an intimate novella about a relationship from the late 1970s —navigate exterior landscapes as well as interior heartscapes." "Sometimes, as with the summer camp story, physical changes to the land have taken place. Other times, it's Krieger's own perceptions that have changed—as when the avid walker she once was goes from being able to discern the trim on a Victorian [house] to not being able to spot dirt on the sidewalk. She also covers the way her dimming vision plays tricks on her—as when, for example, she taps her foot against what looks like a flat sidewalk and finds out it's actually a curb." "Then with a twist of the kaleidoscope, Krieger turns the focus on her self, sharing her fears of being invisible to others because of her physical condition, and also because of her lesbianism." —Suzanne Herel, The Noe Valley Voice (San Francisco) "Krieger's ability to hold inner vision serves her well as her visual acuity diminishes. . . . But much more important, and essential to us all, is her ability to cultivate new vision, whether that's learning to read the different kinds of space beside and between buildings while learning to see her way with a cane, finding other lesbians in different locales, or looking back at the past with new eyes in the book's concluding novella.... [Krieger] is one of our most insightful chroniclers of lesbian experience in the late 20th and early 21st centuries." —Carol Seajay, Books to Watch Out For For feature coverage, please see the Stanford Magazine, "Losing Sight and Finding Vision: A Memoir about Going Blind and More."For more information in addition to this press kit contact our publicity manager, Chris Caldwell, phone: (608) 263-0734, email: publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu To return to the web page for Things No Longer There, click here. |
Cover image: This image can be downloaded and used in any web-based publicity for this book. For a 300 dpi version, click here. Please direct any inquiries for further publicity materials to our publicity manager, phone: (608) 263-0734, email: publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu |
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