(In this extraordinary novel, Sena Jeter Naslund, author o...)
In this extraordinary novel, Sena Jeter Naslund, author of the critically acclaimed national bestseller Ahab's Wife, brilliantly reweaves the colorfully cryptic, fog-enshrouded world of Sherlock in Love is at once a rewarding entertainment and a remarkable homage to the greatest sleuth in literature.
(From the opening line—"Captain Ahab was neither my first ...)
From the opening line—"Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last"—you will know that you are in the hands of a master storyteller and in the company of a fascinating woman hero. Inspired by a brief passage in Moby-Dick, Sena Jeter Naslund has created an enthralling and compellingly readable saga, spanning a rich, eventful, and dramatic life. At once a family drama, a romantic adventure, and a portrait of a real and loving marriage, Ahab's Wife gives new perspective on the American experience.
(Evoking passion and heartbreak., intelligence and unapolo...)
Evoking passion and heartbreak., intelligence and unapologetic humanity, these eight beautifully crafted stories explore the boundary conditions between the self and others.
(Weaving together the lives of blacks and whites, racists ...)
Weaving together the lives of blacks and whites, racists and civil rights advocates, and the events of peaceful protest and violent repression, Sena Jeter Naslund creates a tapestry of American social transformation at once intimate and epic.
(Marie Antoinette was a child of fourteen when her mother,...)
Marie Antoinette was a child of fourteen when her mother, the Empress of Austria, arranged for her to leave her family and her country to become the wife of the fifteen-year-old Dauphin, the future King of France. Coming of age in the most public of arenas - eager to be a good wife and strong queen - she warmly embraces her adopted nation and its citizens.
(Sena Jeter Naslund, the New York Times bestselling author...)
Sena Jeter Naslund, the New York Times bestselling author of Ahab’s Wife, Four Spirits, and Abundance explores both the dark nature of fundamentalism and the brightness of true faith in her dazzling novel, Adam & Eve. A provocative, eloquent, and deeply compelling story of a woman caught between two warring worlds—science and religion—Adam & Eve raises timely questions about identity, innocence, and sin, and represents a new literary high-water mark for New York Times Notable author and Harper Lee Award-winner Naslund.
Sena Jeter Naslund is an American writer. She is a former Distinguished Teaching Professor and Writer in Residence at the University of Louisville and program director of the Spalding University brief-residency Master in Fine Arts in Writing.
Background
Sena Kathryn Jeter was born on June 28, 1942, in Birmingham, Alabama, to Marvin Luther Jeter, a physician, and Flora Lee Sims Jeter, a music teacher.
Sena also has two older brothers, both published writers, Marvin D. Jeter, author of Edward Palmer's Arkansaw Mounds, and John Sims Jeter, author of the novel And the Angels Sang.
Education
Naslund attended public schools, Norwood Elementary and Phillips High School, in Birmingham and graduated from Birmingham Southern College where she received her Bachelor's degree in English. She earned a Master's Degree and a doctorate from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Naslund taught creative writing at the University of Montana for one year before accepting a position in the creative writing program at the University of Louisville in 1973. Naslund served as the director of the University of Louisville's creative writing program for 12 years. She also has been a visiting professor of creative writing at Indiana University-Bloomington (1985-1986) and Vermont College (1982-2000) while continuing to teach at the University of Louisville. At Louisville, Naslund taught undergraduate and graduate writing and literature courses and founded The Louisville Review, a literary journal, in 1976. In celebration of its twentieth year of publication, she established the Fleur-de-Lis Press, which publishes the first works of outstanding authors whose work has appeared in The Louisville Review.
Naslund first published professionally in 1972, when her story "Julius Geissler" appeared in The Iowa Review. Her first book, a collection of contemporary short stories titled Ice Skating at the North Pole, was published in 1989 by Roger Williams University's Ampersand Press. In 1993, she published two novels: The Animal Way to Love, a contemporary novel, and the first of her historical novels, Sherlock in Love. Naslund continues the theme of exploring alternate readings of famous or literary characters in 1999's The Disobedience of Water: Stories and Novellas, which includes several pieces set in Alabama.
In 2003, Sena served jointly as Pascal Vacca Professor, along with her husband, physicist John C. Morrison, at the University of Montevallo. At the behest of the director of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in 2004, Naslund collaborated with a fellow graduate of Phillips High School, Elaine Hughes, a faculty member of the University of Montevallo, on a stage adaptation of Four Spirits. In 2005, Naslund was a keynote speaker at the Eugene Walters Writer's Conference on the campus of the University of South Alabama, and she has spoken at Jacksonville State University, the University of North Alabama, Spring Hill College, and Huntingdon College.
In 2006, Naslund returned to her alma mater as part of a commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Birmingham-Southern College, where she participated in a discussion of Four Spirits with incoming students during orientation; she also spoke at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Naslund appeared as a featured speaker at an open-panel discussion at the University of West Alabama in 2007. Naslund served as the Visiting Eminent Scholar in the Humanities at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) for the spring 2008 semester. During her tenure there, the UAH Theatre Department staged the production of Four Spirits.
Naslund is currently a retired Distinguished Teaching Professor and Writer in Residence at the University of Louisville, as well as the director of Spalding University's brief-residency Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing. She continues as editor of The Louisville Review and of the Fleur-de-Lis Press.
Sena centers on real or fictional characters from the past, bringing to life and exploring the inner lives of individuals living in complex times. Her ambitious and imaginative work illuminates the rich complexities of historical moments, inviting readers to revisit the important issues of important times and places.
Naslund also likes to tell the untold story, particularly of women who may have been marginalized or misunderstood, and she first fully explored this theme in her novel Ahab's Wife; or, The Star Gazer, also published in 1999.
Quotations:
"Our philosophy is first to recognize what’s best about a student’s writing, then what can be improved."
"The faculty and staff consist of excellent writers in every field who are actively publishing or having their work produced. They put their minds and hearts into teaching writing."
"I want to know how people felt about what they were doing - not just what they did. And not even just why they did it, but how did they experience it themselves? That’s where imagination comes in. I try to be historically accurate. But there are important disparities in the historical records, so I get to choose which ones I prefer to believe."
"I am just very drawn to someone whose life is filled by work that is perfectly suitable to them, and that they explore and explore and never exhaust. It seems like a very good way to spend one’s life."
Personality
Naslund writes in Cawein’s former study, a magnificent room with a marble mantel from Louisville’s original Galt House hotel, where Charles Dickens once stayed, and huge bowed windows above the Corinthian-columned front porch. When not working, she enjoys visits from her daughter and son-in-law, Flora and Ron Schildknecht, who are both Spalding MFA grads and accomplished writers, and her 7-year-old grandson.
Interests
music
Connections
Sena was first married to James Michael Callaghan, but they divorced. In 1973, she married author and playwright Alan J. Naslund. Their daughter, Flora Kathryn Naslund, was born in 1980. The marriage ended in divorce in 1991, and she married John C. Morrison in 1995.