Check Out Recommendations from Simmons Faculty and Alumnae/i
Over the course of 2023, many stories have been shared on the Simmons website promoting literature of all kinds, directly from professionals in the field. Here is a round-up of some recommendations, to add to your list this winter.
- Children’s Editor Karen Boss ‘95 ‘13MA champions diverse authors at Charlesbridge Publishing, as is reflected in her list of recommended picture books and middle grade novels.
- Another Charlesbridge Editor, Julie Bliven ’05 ’08MA, shared her own recommended titles, including The Remarkable Rescue at Milkweed Meadow by Elaine Dimopoulos ’08MFA. Bliven’s own debut picture book, Sometimes Shy, was published in May of 2023.
- Our interview with Ariel Richardson ’09MA centered on her work as Editor of the Sibert Medal-Winning Picture Book, Seen and Unseen: What Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams's Photographs Reveal About the Japanese American Incarceration, written by Elizabeth Partridge and illustrated by Lauren Tamaki.
- 2023 began with SLIS and Children's Literature Adjunct Anita Silvey’s reflection on her work editing the award-winning picture book Snowflake Bentley, written by Jacqueline Briggs Martin and illustrated by Mary Azarian.
- This year, we curated lists in honor of Native American Heritage Month and Hispanic Heritage Month.
- Literary Agent Larissa Pienkowski ’15 offered a list of fiction and nonfiction titles representing intersectional identities.
- We spoke to School of Library and Information Science (SLIS) alumni Sacha Lamb ’20MS/MA about the combination of queerness and Jewish folklore in their debut fantasy novel, When The Angels Left the Old Country (Levine Querido, 2022).
- Associate Professor of Children's Literature Marilisa Jiménez García became the first Latina to win Children's Literature Association's Book Award for her non-fiction book, Side by Side: US Empire, Puerto Rico, and the Roots of American Youth Literature and Culture (University Press of Mississippi, 2021), the first extensive study of Puerto Rican and diasporic writers of youth literature over the 20th century.
- Ann Batchelder ’79MSW published her debut memoir, Craving Spring: A mother’s quest, a daughter’s depression, and the Greek myth that brought them together (Legacy Book Press, 2023).
- Emese Parker ’06BSN shared how she combined personal experience with her expertise in women's health in her debut book, To Carry Wonder: A Memoir and Guide to Adventures in Pregnancy and Beyond.
- Historian Kate Clifford Larson '80 '95MA shared insight into her long career writing biographies of women in history, from Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero (2003, Penguin Random House), to her most recent title, Walk with Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer(2021, Oxford University Press).
- The daughter of Rebecca Cohan ’72MSW honored her mother’s legacy by publishing Rebecca's Kitchen, a collection of her mother’s recipes, the proceeds of which support a scholarship fund for Simmons students.