Harrison Solow's Blog
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May.10.2010
I don’t think I shall easily forget that afternoon at the top of Pencarreg. Cerys and I travelled up a long hedge-rowed, one-lane, rural road that I had never seen before (but she had always known was there) with an incremental sense of enclosure – as it drew in, closed in, shut out whatever...
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2 comments
May.08.2010
This post has been removed by the author as an editor has just seen it and his magazine would like to publish it.
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4 comments
May.04.2010
The Ce/Fe Factor:
Human/Robot Bonding in Isaac Asimov's Robot Trilogy
When the robot, Daneel Olivaw has his first real conversation with detective Elijah Baley, he describes the ideal relationship between men and robots in general as a C/Fe culture:
...
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Apr.30.2010
It was announced last night that I have won the First Place Award in Carpe Articulum's International Short Fiction Competition for my story "Mater Amabilis". Although Mater Amabilis was published before (and won First Place in another International Competition), this competition was much...
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36 comments
Apr.25.2010
When she is not there, he runs his rough fingers
over the lips he cannot feel with his working skin –
his sun-stained, dip-dried, sheep-tending hands.
His mouth feels what his hands cannot.
Nothing is ever tender enough for him,
save the newborn lambs he sends
to their hideous deaths; a deep...
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10 comments
Apr.22.2010
Men Creating Men
In Robert Silverberg's World's Fair 1992,the young hero, Bill, is projected into an adult world, in which he must prove himself to be equal to the men around him. He has won a competition by writing an essay about life on other planets, and the prize is a trip to and a job at, the...
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11 comments
Apr.15.2010
Two Remarks on Children’s Books:
1. I have been collecting, enjoying and at times studying, children’s books all my life. Well, from age three, thanks to my mother who taught me to read. I have 3000 of them (now - I gave about 900 to the library before we left Los Angeles). I love them with a...
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12 comments
Apr.14.2010
(This was originally a response to a friend's blog but I decided to post it here because it has an identity of its own.)
It's always so strange meeting people with whom one may have shared so much at one time. It is as though one is standing in the centre of Rome with all those roads like spokes...
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8 comments
Apr.07.2010
Sophie's World is an unusual book I sent to my son for his birthday a few years ago. Sophie's World is essentially the history of philosophy embodied in a story - a story in which a young girl comes home from school to find a letter in her mailbox that says simply, "Who are you?"
The 400 pages...
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12 comments
Apr.02.2010
The minute we are born, our caretakers begin to form us. So much depends on thousands of tiny things - how they dress us, for example - whether we get used to being tightly bundled in a blanket in cool, wet Wales or if we are accustomed to being naked except for a nappy in the warm, tropical...
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8 comments
Mar.29.2010
Certainly one of the most powerful moments in my life was the "coming of (moral) age" on my seventh birthday, for I had been instructed on - or rather charged with (and by) the knowledge that the mantle of responsibility would fall from my parents' shoulders on that day and alight on my...
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17 comments
Mar.26.2010
"It's about literature. It's about reading. It's about writing. It’'s about becoming educated, about not assuming things aren't happening just because you don't see them happening, about not ever believing that language is a true vehicle for communication - and it’'s about knowing that sometimes,...
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13 comments
Mar.19.2010
Advance Praise for Felicity and Barbara Pym
1. "A splendid book! Original, controversial, academic, readable, serious, light-hearted, sensible, charming..." - Hazel Holt, Literary Executor of the Barbara Pym Estate, author of the Barbara Pym biography, A Lot to Ask: A Life...
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7 comments
Mar.17.2010
One Spring Morning - From The Postmaster's Song, by Harrison Solow On the way to the university, even though she was running a little late, she stopped at the Post Office, which was just across the road from the campus. The Post Office was Mallory’s favourite place in the village. On pale November...
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2 comments
Mar.15.2010
All my childhood life I was in love with San Francisco - I spent my heart there, just loving every scent and street and the flavour of it - North Beach and the beatniks, the artists colonies, bookstores, bakeries, museums, Golden Gate Park, and so many secret and wonderful places. Loved the...
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"dazzling ... fills me with the most exquisite professional envy!"
”
—Thomas Vinciguerra, New York Times contributor & consultant, and editor, writer, critic for New Yorker, People, New York, The New York Observer, Newsday, Lingua Franca, GQ, etc.
About Harrison
Dr. Harrison Solow’s writing awards include the Pushcart Prize for Literature (2008). She is published by Simon & Schuster, The University of California Press, Harper Collins, Carpe Articulum, AOL, Cinnamon Press, AGNI, The Pushcart Press and several...
Causes Harrison Solow Supports
Lupus Foundation of America
Museum of Tolerance
Humane Society
Harrison’s Favorite Books
Our library consists of several thousand books. Favourite books span a wide range of genres, categories and eras. Among these are books of/on theology, art,...