{"title":"Karen Salyer Mcelmurray","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"voice-lessons-book-karen-salyer-mcelmurray-9781604542530","title":"Voice Lessons","description":"\u003cp\u003eA memoir-in-essays, \u003cem\u003eVoice Lessons \u003c\/em\u003eis one woman from Appalachia's remembrance of childhood and of education, both formal and personal. McElmurray enters the world of writing and teaching, all the while coming to understand her deeply troubled mother. The essays are arranged in four major sections: early years and experiences of faith; the work of hands and the work of classrooms, paralleling her mother's diagnosis of Alzheimer's; writing and academia and the mother, disappearing into a land of forgetting. Finally, a fourth section relays both her mother's death and the author's acceptance of her own voice. Silas House writes that McElmurray's voice is inimitable, innovative, powerful, and always a pleasure to behold.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49559623565585,"sku":"GOR012907911","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51234965586193,"sku":"NIN9781604542530","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1604542535.jpg?v=1750895486"},{"product_id":"wanting-radiance-book-karen-salyer-mcelmurray-9781949669145","title":"Wanting Radiance","description":"Miracelle Loving's world comes crashing down when her mother, Ruby, is murdered during a fortune-telling session gone wrong. Not that she had much of a stable world to lose in the first place; the free-spirited mother-daughter duo had never remained in one place for very long. Without the guidance of her mother, Miracelle grows up following the only path she knows, traveling from town to town, sometimes fortune-telling, picking up odd jobs to fill the time and escape the ever-present lostness she can't seem to run far enough away from. Uncertain of what she wants and, indeed, whether she wants anything or anyone at all, the now thirty-something-year-old finds herself working as a card reader in a Knoxville dive bar, selling fictions as futures, when she is confronted with her mother's ghost voice promising to reveal the truth about her shadowy past. Desperate for answers, Miracelle sets out on a magical road trip unlike any other, in search of her own story and a father she's never known. Following snowy highways and backroads, Miracelle stumbles across a museum of oddities and a hole-in-the-road town called Radiant, ultimately wandering into the town of Smyte, where she begins waitressing at the Black Cat Diner. Here, she befriends card-playing has-been Russell Wallen, whom she joins for a series of nighttime adventures, long drives, and after-dark visits to a Holy Roller church. This mythical journey uncovers family secrets and forgotten truths, transforming a familiar story of love and betrayal to reveal the binding power of magic and memory.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":49962808770833,"sku":"CIN1949669149A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51058883821841,"sku":"NIN9781949669145","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1949669149.jpg?v=1751094182"},{"product_id":"i-could-name-god-in-twelve-ways-book-karen-salyer-mcelmurray-9781985900653","title":"I Could Name God in Twelve Ways","description":"I could dream in poetry, could summon words for spiritual experience, could name God in twelve ways and in ten times and places in history.      Award-winning writer Karen Salyer McElmurray details her life's journey across continents and decades in a poetic collection that is equal parts essay-as-memoir, memoir-as-Künstlerroman, and travelogue-as-meditation.      It is about the deserts of India. A hospital ward in Maryland. The blue seas of Greece. A greenhouse in Virginia. It is about the spirit houses of Thailand. The mountains of eastern Kentucky. The depths of the Grand Canyon. A creative writing classroom in Georgia. An attic in a generations-old house. It is about coming to terms with both memory and the power of writing itself.     At turns lyrical, poignant, and alluring, McElmurray probes her personal history from the stance of different places, perspectives, and vulnerabilities as she tenderly and fiercely searches for acceptance and a place to call home.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50994708087057,"sku":"NIN9781985900653","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51416828510481,"sku":"NGR9781985900653","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ LIKE_NEW \/ SBYB","offer_id":53148807168273,"sku":"CIN1985900653LN","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1985900653.jpg?v=1751382024"},{"product_id":"wanting-radiance-book-karen-salyer-mcelmurray-9781949669336","title":"Wanting Radiance","description":"This mythical journey uncovers family secrets and forgotten truths to reveal the binding power of magic and memory.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51059941507345,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51059943637265,"sku":"NIN9781949669336","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1949669335.jpg?v=1751156832"},{"product_id":"motel-of-the-stars-book-karen-salyer-mcelmurray-9781932511666","title":"The Motel of the Stars","description":"The Motel of the Stars is a novel set in Kentucky and North Carolina on the eve of the 1997 anniversary of the Harmonic Convergence, a mystical alignment of planets and a portending of universal peace first celebrated in 1987. Part satire of New Age philosophy and part commentary on a modern, fear-based era, the novel is the story of Jason Sanderson and Lory Llewellyn, who travel to the 1997 Anniversary Gathering at the foot of Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina. Both characters have for ten years mourned the loss of Sam Sanderson, Jason’s son and Lory’s lover, and both must emerge from grief into a new age of possibility and hope.  Karen Salyer McElmurray is the author of Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother’s Journey, described by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution as “a moving meditation on loss and memory and the rendering of truth and story.” The book was the recipient of the 2003 AWP Award for Creative Nonfiction and a National Book Critics Circle Notable Book. McElmurray’s debut novel, Strange Birds in the Tree of Heaven, was winner of the 2001 Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing. Her work has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and the North Carolina Arts Council. She lives in Milledgeville, Georgia, where she is an assistant professor in creative writing at Georgia College and State University; she is also the creative nonfiction editor for Arts and Letters.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51326152048913,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51326154473745,"sku":"CIN1932511660VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52479355650321,"sku":"NLS9781932511666","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52756763377937,"sku":"NIN9781932511666","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1932511660.jpg?v=1750965146"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-karen-salyer-mcelmurray.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}