Underrated Writers

Mary Allen

James Tata recommended Mary Allen, specifically pointing out her book The Rooms of Heaven : A Story of Love, Death, Grief, and the Afterlife.  According to James, "Much of the coverage of Joan Didion's recent The Year of Magical Thinking concentrated on the rarity of grief being accurately depicted in literature, and on the resemblance of grief to madness; Allen's memoir anticipates Didion's by half a decade, and her account of trying to contact her dead lover through the devices of Spiritualism becomes a harrowing metaphor for the intolerability of love's loss."

More about Mary Allen
+ Writers' Corner page at NEA
+ Booklist review of The Rooms of Heaven
+ Excerpt from The Rooms of Heaven

John Isles

This poet joins the list by way of James Tata. As with all the books James recommends, he says that Isles' debut collection of poems, Ark, has "more faith in authentic emotion than in hollow sophistication." Specifically, he says, "these poems, with their depth of feeling towards the twinned consolations of erotic love and nature, have a rapturous intensity that most poety only gestures towards." Isles served in the Peace Corps and recently won an NEA grant and the 2004 Ruskin Art Club Poetry Award and his work has appeared in Boston Review and Colorado Review.

More about John Isles
+  Isles' poems "(Arcade)" and "(City of Our Making)" in Issue #7 of Electronic Poetry Review
+  An excerpt from Ark, a review, and ordering info from the publisher, the University of Iowa Press
+  A review of Isles' collection at Peace Corps Writers

Mary O'Connell

James Tata says of this author's collection, Living with Saints: "A book of short stories whose humor--going against the contemporary trend of shallow irony--is full of warmth, though never stinting on the pain that makes such humor necessary."

More about Mary O'Connell
+  Bookreporter's interview with O'Connell
+  A review of Living with Saints
+  NYT's review of Saints

Gayle Pemberton

This author has published a collection of essays titled The Hottest Water in Chicago: Notes of a Native Daughter. "I've always felt," says recommender James Tata, "that one of the reasons the African American essayistic tradition in American letters is so strong--Du Bois, Ellison, Baldwin come immediately to mind--is that all you have to do to get material if you're black is to walk out your front door; America harshly provides the rest. Pemberton mines her experiences and her literary tradition for essays of warmth, intelligence, and wit." Pemberton is a professor at Wesleyan University.

More about Gayle Pemberton
+  Review of Hottest Water

Iqbal Pittalwala

James Tata says the stories in Pittalwala's collection, Dear Paramount Pictures, "run the gamut from humor to tragedy. The title story still makes me laugh after repeated readings. The last story, 'House of Cards,' still haunts." A graduate of Iowa's writing program in 1995, Pittalwala has published stories in Confrontation, Blue Mesa Review, and Seattle Review, among others. In 2004, he won the Gival Press Short Story Award for "Legacy."

More about Iqbal Pittalwala
+  A review of the collection in The Georgia Review
+  A video of Pittalwala reading at UC, Riverside

Katherine Stall

This author's 1987 novel, Den of Thieves, is recommended by James Tata. "Before radical right-wing religious figures took over the governing bodies of the United States, they first had to demolish their humane opponents within the churches. Like the best satire, Catch-22, and the film Citizen Ruth, this novel's comedy excuses no one from its wrath." Check that book link for a summary of a great plot from Publishers Weekly.