{"title":"Debra Monroe","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"wild-cold-state-book-debra-monroe-9780684815114","title":"Wild, Cold State","description":"In the lavishly acclaimed collection of short stories A Wild, Cold State, Flannery O'Connor Award - winning author Debra Monroe takes us into the lives of women striving for love and emotional fulfillment amidst a forbidding topography of glacial winds and stormY, unpredictable men  The stories in A Wild, Cold State offer a familiar and resonant portrayal of the complexities of everyday life and the fundamental human need for connection.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49647842066705,"sku":"GOR006395784","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50359401808145,"sku":"CIN0684815117G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52130064040209,"sku":"NLS9780684815114","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0684815117.jpg?v=1751008765"},{"product_id":"on-the-outskirts-of-normal-book-debra-monroe-9780820349114","title":"On the Outskirts of Normal","description":"\u003cp\u003eAfter moving to a humble cottage outside of a tiny Texas town, Debra Monroe rids herself of an abusive husband, battles sexist contractors and workers as she renovates her home, and finally, after several disheartening letdowns, is able to adopt her beautiful baby daughter, Marie. Though elated that her dream is coming true, Monroe faces trials that befall her not just as a single mother but as a white mother of a black child. In \u003ci\u003eOn the Outskirts of Normal\u003c\/i\u003e, two-time National Book Award nominee Monroe's heart creaks like china with hairline cracks each time a racist comment rolls their way or stares linger a little too long in their direction. Though she and her daughter face serious undiagnosed illnesses leading to innumerable, painful doctor visits, Monroe remains steadfast in her dedication to Marie and their small but tight family. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eReading \u003ci\u003eOn the Outskirts of Normal\u003c\/i\u003e at times feels like driving through an unwieldy thunderstorm at night on the unlit country roads that snake their way to Monroe's house in the woods; readers will feel her exhaustion but will be buoyed by her ever-present faith and fiery love. Pulitzer Prize winner Madeleine Blais writes that \u003ci\u003eOn the Outskirts of Normal\u003c\/i\u003e is the real deal: both a literary triumph and a triumph of the heart.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49909471314193,"sku":"CIN0820349119G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0820349119.jpg?v=1750979594"},{"product_id":"it-takes-a-worried-woman-book-debra-monroe-9780820363080","title":"It Takes a Worried Woman","description":"Debra Monroe has always written about the source of trouble, \"that one incident you zero down to and everything bad that happens afterward happens because of it.\" The illusion that every problem has a clear-cut cause and discernible solution is apparently her gateway drug. It Takes a Worried Woman explores the outer limits of her faith that all past hardship could have been prevented and all future hardship might still be.  Yet one person’s trouble is often a small eddy in the outflow of history, and this book becomes a meditation on the price of effort exerted against fixed circumstances. Dense with history, lyrical, at times darkly funny, these essays explore sexism, racism, hate speech, violence, Monroe’s grief about dwindling access to the natural world, and her fears as her daughter’s adult life unfolds. Whether depicting the ubiquitous pressure to marry, the search for a shape-shifting familiar old enough to be her mother, or childcare as a game of risk, Monroe takes a measured look at problems that could be solved, problems that may never be, and at all the ways that trouble is big but hope, new strategies, fresh patience, and endurance are eventually big enough.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50163089178897,"sku":"CIN0820363081G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51008454820113,"sku":"NIN9780820363080","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0820363081.jpg?v=1766142203"},{"product_id":"contemporary-creative-nonfiction-book-debra-monroe-9781524980092","title":"Contemporary Creative Nonfiction","description":"Existing creative nonfiction anthologies don't reflect the current cultural landscape. This anthology, featuring essays in forms both traditional and innovative, showcases the genre today – not how it was fifteen years ago when creative nonfiction seemed to include only memoir.   Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: An Anthology reveals how quickly the genre evolved into exciting subgenres. With essays by established and emerging writers, it mirrors the rich panoply of the current American experience.  Edited by creative writing professor and acclaimed author Debra Monroe, Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: An Anthology:   Is demographically inclusive! It features writers from diverse racial, geographic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Is aesthetically varied! It includes the traditional essay but also the lyric essay, the experimental essay, the essay as cultural analysis, and the researched essay. Teaches history, theory, and craft! The introductory chapter is widely researched yet concise, comprising history, theory, and craft principles – a careful synthesis of many teaching resources in a single chapter. Is interactive! Each selection includes introductory headnotes providing biographical information about the writer and pointing at one or two unique formal or thematic features, followed by writing prompts designed to move writers past fear of the blank page. Is easy to adopt! Instructors receive a one-of-a-kind manual that's thorough and insightful – reflecting the editor's years of teaching experience – to help them design dynamic syllabuses.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50302985568529,"sku":"CIN1524980099G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52424904802577,"sku":"NLS9781524980092","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1524980099.jpg?v=1750797456"},{"product_id":"source-of-trouble-book-debra-monroe-9780671897161","title":"Source of Trouble","description":"Winner of The Flannery O'Connor Award, this critically acclaimed debut collection features ten stories set in the plains of the Midwest and the honky-tonks of the South.  Witty and sly, exciting and powerful, these are stories about people who understand their own complicity belatedly, but never too late. Illuminated in these affecting, self-revealing stories is the measure of hope and healing that lies in every heart and coupling, no matter the trespass.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50359132979473,"sku":"CIN0671897160G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52401152852241,"sku":"NLS9780671897161","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52817135108369,"sku":"CIN0671897160VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0671897160.jpg?v=1751294989"},{"product_id":"on-the-outskirts-of-normal-book-debra-monroe-9780870745607","title":"On the Outskirts of Normal","description":"Mired in debt and on the run from a series of broken homes, about-to-be-divorced Debra Monroe pulls up in front of a tumbledown cabin outside a small Texas town. Its isolation--miles from her teaching job in a neighbouring city--feels right. She buys the house and ultimately doubles its size as she waits for the call from the adoption agency to tell her she's going to be a mother. Now in her forties, she is swept into the strange new world of single motherhood, complicated by the fact that she's white and her daughter is black. As Monroe learns to deal with her daughter's hair and to re-enter the dating scene, all the while coping with her own and her daughter's major illnesses, they live under the magnified scrutiny of the small, conservative town.  Confronting her past in order to make a better life for her daughter, Monroe rebuilds not only a half-ruined cabin in the woods but her sense of what it is that makes a sustainable family.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50370523332881,"sku":"CIN0870745603G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50959877767441,"sku":"CIN0870745603VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0870745603.jpg?v=1751045039"},{"product_id":"my-unsentimental-education-book-debra-monroe-9780820348742","title":"My Unsentimental Education","description":"\u003cp\u003e This picaresque memoir of a woman with brains and desires (not always operating in unison) is a joy. It tracks a runaway life with consummate control and aphoristic wit. \u003cbr\u003e Phillip Lopate\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e Debra Monroe is a terrifically acute observer of the two worlds of women: her mother s generation corseted in sexual and familial constraints; her own, in which lovers and addresses shift with the wind. She is able, in other words, to make just as many mistakes, only different ones. My Unsentimental Education is very funny, not least at Monroe s own expense, and it raises a dozen potent questions about what has changed for a generation of women not so much disillusioned as unillusioned about what it means to live like a man. \u003cbr\u003e Rosellen Brown, author of Half a Heart\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e Through a series of near pratfalls and sheer acrobatic strength, Debra Monroe integrates the schisms of taught identity a bumpy, if not bumptious, education shared by many, a charismatic story at once wildly entertaining, buoyant, and wise. \u003cbr\u003e Melissa Pritchard, author of Palmerino\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCRUX logo\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe University of Georgia Press\u003cbr\u003eAthens, Georgia 30602\u003cbr\u003ewww.ugapress.org\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eISBN 978-0-8203-4874-2\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50371813310737,"sku":"CIN0820348740G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51886840054033,"sku":"CIN0820348740VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0820348740.jpg?v=1751395400"},{"product_id":"shambles-book-debra-monroe-9780983547716","title":"Shambles","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51110671909137,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51110675841297,"sku":"NIN9780983547716","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0983547718.jpg?v=1751235899"},{"product_id":"my-unsentimental-education-book-debra-monroe-9780820353753","title":"My Unsentimental Education","description":"A misfit in Spooner, Wisconsin, with its farms, bars, and strip joints, Debra Monroe leaves to earn a degree, then another, and another, and builds a career. Both the story of her steady rise into the professional class and a parallel history of unsuitable exes, this memoir reminds us how accidental even a good life can be.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51694261633297,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51694262976785,"sku":"CIN0820353752G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53490210865425,"sku":"NIN9780820353753","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0820353752.jpg?v=1751296815"},{"product_id":"newfangled-book-debra-monroe-9780684851976","title":"Newfangled","description":"Maddie, a refugee from two marriages, wanders from place to place seeking new options and new connections. 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Just as she's trying to decide whether she's actually 'at home' in Tucson, she receives a phone call that sends her on another journey, one that takes her both physically and emotionally into the past and affords her a glimpse of a newfangled future.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52403523846417,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52403524469009,"sku":"NLS9780684851976","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780684851976.jpg?v=1758761177"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-debra-monroe.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}