ANNA’S POETRY BOOKS
APERTURE
Shearman, 2017
As the title suggests, Aperture opens gaps through which to see and hear lives of imagined and actual women. This collection becomes a stage on which these women perform, and the poems play with notions of staging, with how we present ourselves and are perceived and represented by others. From science, history, and literature, the stories and voices in Aperture “bend and come back again,” telling the truth slant.
“Anna Leahy’s generous poetic imagination encompasses women from Marie Curie to Esther Williams to Elizabeth Siddal, poet Felicia Hemans to a lighthouse keeper. It is through the rare courage of distance, both aesthetic and psychological, that the lovely, compelling poems of Aperture afford us their unique glimpse of an all-too-often-ignored female universe of inner and outer significance.” —Annie Finch, author of Spells: New and Selected Poems
“Aperture is simultaneously focused in its subject matter about women and capacious in scope, not an easy feat. The book is an aperture or an opening into essential lives that may have been forgotten. There are persona poems and third-person lyric poems that investigate women—from the mothers in The Wizard of Oz, to artists and poets, to saints, to mathematicians, to astronomers, and much more—creating a chorus of unique, yet unified female voices. Anna Leahy writes poems with intelligence, concision, grace, and precision in terms of the line, language, and the word. Aperture is an arresting and necessary addition to the landscape of contemporary poetry.” —Victoria Chang, author of The Boss
SHARP MIRACLES
Blue Lyra Press, 2016
“Anna Leahy takes the ekphrastic poem out of the stuffy confines of museums and studios and turns it into a means for discovery and revelation. These poems breathe life into their subjects with a delicate touch and a thrumming heart.” —Allison Joseph, author of My Father’s Kites
“Anna Leahy has written a seductive suite of persona poems in the voice of nineteenth century model, painter and poet Elizabeth Siddal. One is reminded of Adrienne Rich’s comments about re-vision, entering an old text from a new critical direction, being an act of survival. I am grateful for these bright and skillfully wrought imaginings of a woman whose life was shaped by the tension of being both subject and object, artist and muse.” —Sheryl St. Germain, author of Navigating Disaster
CONSTITUENTS OF MATTER
Wick Poetry Prize, Kent State University Press, 2007
That which occupies space; substance; experience; subject of concern, feeling, or action; difficulty; quantity; something set down in writing; from the Latin mater, mother. What matters, ultimately, in Anna Leahy’s crafted cosmology, is that family, lovers, thinkers, and saints shine like stars through each and every one of her intelligent words. —Kathy Fagan, author of Sycamore and Lip
“Constituents of Matter looks hard and long at the ‘solid things’ of the world; they are reflected and refracted by time. The matter that constitutes experience occupies a space ‘immense’ with ’emptiness’ but is also ‘buoyant’ with ‘joy.’ Like the moose Anna Leahy looks at and who catches her looking, I’m contained by a ‘large life’ that’s revealed in intervals of repose and stillness.” —Michael Collier, author of An Individual History
DOUG’S BOOKS
THE CRAFT OF LIBRARIAN INSTRUCTION
American Library Association, 2016
Library instruction is like a theatre performance. One plays a role as the instruction librarian, with a live audience and possibly reviews or evaluations. Or maybe the teaching experience feels more like an audition. In The Craft of Librarian Instruction: Using Acting Techniques to Create Your Teaching Presence, join Julie Artman, Jeff Sundquist, and Douglas R. Dechow for a fun and creative approach to library instruction as they demonstrate how acting techniques can hone presentation skills, teaching style, and performance to create an invigorating (and low-stress) learning experience for students.
INTERTWINGLED:
THE WORK AND INFLUENCE OF TED NELSON
Springer, 2015
Co-edited by Douglas R. Dechow and Daniele C. Struppa, this engaging volume celebrates the life and work of Theodor Holm “Ted” Nelson, a pioneer and legendary figure from the history of early computing. Presenting contributions from world-renowned computer scientists and figures from the media industry, the book delves into hypertext, the docuverse, Xanadu, and other products of Ted Nelson’s unique mind. Features include a cartoon and a sequence of poems created in Nelson’s honor, reflecting his wide-ranging and interdisciplinary intellect; peer histories, providing a sense of the milieu that resulted from Nelson’s ideas; personal accounts revealing what it is like to collaborate directly with Nelson; a chronicle of Nelson’s legacy from the perspective of his contemporaries from the computing world; and a contribution from Ted Nelson himself. With a broad appeal spanning computer scientists, science historians, and the general reader, this inspiring collection reveals the continuing influence of the original visionary of the World Wide Web.
SQUEAK: A QUICK TRIP TO OBJECTLAND
Addison-Wesley, 2002
Beginning with an overview of object-oriented fundamentals, Squeak—A Quick Trip to ObjectLand then builds on the basic building blocks of the Squeak programming language and progresses to more complex language concepts. Successful strategies for debugging and testing are discussed as well as the following topics: booleans and blocks, iteration and recursion, code writing (style, comment, convention), and the future of Squeak. Throughout the book, topics, goals, and words of wisdom are clearly outlined. Co-authored by Gene Korienek, Tom Wrensch, and Douglas R. Dechow.
ANNA’S PEDAGOGY BOOKS
What We Talk about When We Talk about Creative Writing
Multilingual Matter, 2016
Marking the tenth anniversary of the New Writing Viewpoints series, this new book takes the concept of an edited collection to its extreme, pushing the possibilities of scholarship and collaboration. All authors in this book, including those who contributed to Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom, which launched the series ten years earlier, are proof that creative writing matters, that it can be rewarding over the long haul, and that there exist many ways to do what we do as writers and as teachers. This book captures a wide swathe of ideas on pedagogy, on programs, on the profession, and on careers.
Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom
Multilingual Matters, 2005
“Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom serves as a fine example of this expanding, improving conversation on the teaching of creative writing. This book is generative, ranging and substantial. It is a book I wish I had read before I taught my first creative writing workshop. This is an impressive collection. Among other issues, The Authority Project addresses power dynamics in the classroom, assumptions about the roles of students and teachers in creative writing, gendering in creative writing, and how best to teach students in this complicated classroom space. Authority, as all teachers know, is a central dynamic in the classroom, and this collection should be of use to creative writing teachers and others who want to learn more about it.” —Eric Burger, Pedagogy 7:1
ANNA’S FORTHCOMING BOOKS
TUMOR
Bloomsbury, 2017
“The Object Lessons series achieves something very close to magic: the books take ordinary—even banal—objects and animate them with a rich history of invention, political struggle, science, and popular mythology. Filled with fascinating details and conveyed in sharp, accessible prose, the books make the everyday world come to life. Be warned: once you’ve read a few of these, you’ll start walking around your house, picking up random objects, and musing aloud: ‘I wonder what the story is behind this thing?'” —Steven Johnson, bestselling author of How We Got to Now
Conversing with Cancer: How to Ask Questions, Find and Share Information, and Make the Best Decisions
Language as Social Action Series, 2017
Conversing With Cancer informs the growing field of Health Communication, which studies how patients, caregivers, and healthcare professionals interact and how to improve those interactions. Each person whose life is affected by a cancer diagnosis—patient, healthcare provider, caregiver—holds information and needs information in order to make the best decisions possible under the circumstances. A deeper knowledge of communication processes can help anyone negotiate this difficult time, exert some control in a sometimes uncontrollable situation, and work toward better health outcomes for individuals so that they can lead the best life possible. This book is perfect for instructors who want to develop an illness-specific section of a course and for students who want in-depth study of cancer communication or an example of how health communication applies to a specific illness.