A Slant of Light: Contemporary Women Writers of the Hudson Valley (Codhill Press)

A collection of contemporary prose and poetry by women writers from New York’s Hudson Valley.

This volume celebrates the contemporary prose and poetry of more than a hundred women from New York’s Hudson Valley. Drawing on writers from the eastern border of New York State to the foothills of the Catskills, and along the length of the Hudson River from Westchester to Albany, editors Laurence Carr and Jan Zlotnik Schmidt bring together a wide variety of female voices that evocatively address issues that touch not only women, but also every reader who desires insight into the human experience.

A Slant of Light is divided into five sections, each addressing a theme of women’s lives. The book begins with “Mythos”: representations and revisions of myths of women. The second section, “Body and Gender,” explores visions of the body, gender socialization, and women’s roles. The third section, “Identity,” presents works that examine both how women see themselves and how others see them. The fourth section brings together works presenting women in a variety of roles, such as parent, child, partner, and lover. The last, “Woman in the World,” collects works that meditate on our collective fate in a global world.

What distinguishes this volume is the diversity of women’s perspectives in terms of age, ethnicity, cultural background, and subject matter. The book brings together voices both lyrical and edgy, and challenges readers to think deeply about our changing lives in the twenty-first century.