Recensori in anteprimaMelissa Pritchard

A majestic novel of Florence Nightingale, whose courage, self-confidence, and resilience transformed nursing and the role of women in medicine

Sweeping yet intimate, Flight of the Wild Swan tells the story of Florence Nightingale, a brilliant, trailblazing woman whose humanity has been obscured beneath the iconic weight of legend. From adolescence, Nightingale was determined to fulfill her life’s calling to serve the sick and suffering. Overcoming Victorian hierarchies, familial expectations, patriarchal resistance, and her own illness, she used her hard-won acclaim as a battlefield nurse to bring the profession out of its shadowy, disreputable status and elevate nursing to a skilled practice and compassionate art. In lush, lyrical detail, Melissa Pritchard reveals Nightingale as a rebel who wouldn’t relent—one whose extraordinary life offers a grand lesson in inspired will.

“Marvelous and moving.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A fresh imagining of an icon... [Florence Nightingale], in Pritchard’s portrayal, is an indomitable force.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Reflections on a literary life pulled in two directions: from war zone journalism to the writing and teaching of fiction “Pritchard polishes the strange and makes it shine.” —Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams at the San Francisco Chronicle “Heartfelt . . . bear[s] powerful witness to suffering, compassion, and transcendence.” —Kirkus Reviews “Gorgeous and moving. . . . Each of these essays confirms that to write is to think and feel, to take part in the profound and sacred act of witness. Read together—and the book is so arresting that many readers will finish it in a single sitting—the essays amount to a clear and irrefutable mandate for empathy.” —Bret Anthony Johnston, director of Creative Writing at Harvard University, author of Remember Me Like This, and editor of Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer (from the Foreword) In A Solemn Pleasure, Melissa Pritchard presents an undeniable case for both the power of language and the nurturing constancy of the writing life. This is nonfiction vividly engaged with the world, encompassing the author’s journeys into the deeply interior imaginative life required to write fiction, her search for the lost legacy of American literature as embodied by Walt Whitman, her reports from Afghanistan while embedded with a young female GI, her tales of travel with Ethiopian tribes, and the heartrending story of her informally adopted son William, a former Sudanese child slave. Through these fifteen magnificent essays, Pritchard shares her passion for writing and storytelling that educates, honors, and inspires.

Palmerino is the British enclave in rural Italy where Violet Paget, known to the world by her pen name and male persona, Vernon Lee, held court with fascinating artists and intellectuals—Oscar Wilde, John Singer Sargent, Henry James, Robert Browning, Bernard Berenson—who challenged and inspired each other during an age of repression. In imagining the real life of this brilliant writer known for her chilling supernatural stories, Pritchard creates a multilayered tale in which Violet inhabits the heart and mind of her lonely, modern-day biographer. Early praise for Palmerino “Enthralling . . . An intriguing introduction to Violet Paget, and an unusual look into the mysteries of writing.” —Booklist “A supernaturally infused, innovative story . . . Pritchard’s fertile imagination and presentation give new meaning to the expression ‘a meeting of the minds.’” —Kirkus Reviews “Dazzling in its descriptions, lush and lyrical in language, Palmerino is a jewel of a novel. It is a tale to be savored like a rich Italian pastry. Melissa Pritchard’s characters—eccentric, quirky, and brilliant—will live on in the heart and mind long after the last crumb is licked from the plate.” —NAOMI BENARON, author of Running the Rift “This lovely, sexy novel provides a sumptuous glance into the secret lives of artists. At its center is Violet, a fierce woman who never met a rule she didn’t break. Melissa Pritchard’s voice is completely her own and her characters are as unique, wild and magical as she is.” —TAYARI JONES, author of Silver Sparrow

“The stories in this strange and original collection bend genres—horror, mystery, Western—into wondrous new shapes.” —O, The Oprah Magazine In each of these eight lyrical and baroque tales, Melissa Pritchard transports readers into spine-tingling milieus that range from the astounding realm of Robert LeRoy Ripley’s “odditoriums” to the courtyard where Edgar Allan Poe once played as a child. Whether she is setting the famed figures of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, including Annie Oakley and Sitting Bull, against the real, genocidal history of the American West, or contrasting the luxurious hotel where British writer Somerset Maugham stayed with the modern-day brothels of India, her stories illuminate the many ways history and architecture exert powerful forces upon human consciousness. Melissa Pritchard is a Flannery O’Connor, Janet Heidinger Kafka, and Carl Sandburg award-winning author whose two previous short fiction collections were New York Times Notable Book and Editor’s Choice selections. She has also been an embedded journalist in Afghanistan and is member of the Afghan Women’s Writing Project, which helps to promote literacy and education for Afghan women and girls. Visit her website at www.melissapritchard.com