Doubiago, Sharon

El Nino: Stories

ISBN: 0918786398
Providence, RI: Lost Roads, 1989. First Edition. Signed by Sharon Doubiago to Thomas Rain Crowe. “Sharon was living up in Mendocino during the 1970s, having come from Los Angeles. She was just finding her wings as a poet and would come down to San Francisco on occasion to check out what was going on. And then later she staged “Readings of SF Poets” up in Mendocino–to which we would migrate en masse up Hwy. 1 along the coast for a get-away weekend up in the country near the ocean. I met her in the Trieste Caffe, which was THE bohemian hangout in San Francisco in those days. She gravitated towards Jack Hirschman and was very fond of his work and his vision. I would have to say that I think Jack has to be considered her major influence. He certainly was then–and might still be even to this day. But she was also very interested in women writers. H.D. had a major impact on her and her own brand of feminism. And there were others. While she wasn't directly involved in readings and activist events that were going on in San Francisco during those years, she was an avid student and taking it all in by osmosis, and I can say that her beauty and presence was felt by all whenever she would come to town. She’s stayed true to her vision, which was to become a poet. She just had a major collection of her selected poetry, Naked to the Earth, published in 2017.”--Thomas Rain Crowe, The Thomas Rain Crowe Archive [#1010], pg 34. Sharon Doubiago (b. 1941) is the author of eleven collections of award-winning poetry, including the recent Naked to the Earth. Psyche Drives the Coast won the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. She’s a recipient of three Pushcart Prizes, two Oregon Literary Arts Fellowships, and is a National Book Award nominee. Doubiago’s work includes, South America Mi Hija, The Husband Arcane, The Arcane of O, and The Visit. Her four award-winning memoirs are The Book of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes, My Father’s Love, Vols 1 &2. My Beard is memoir in the form of individual stories rather than the on-going narrative of traditional memoir. Offered today is the critically lauded, and publicly beloved 1989 collection El Nino. A collection of short stories–largely detailing a period in Doubiago’s life in which she was living out of a van writing full-time as opposed to working full-time and writing part-time–is written with a surprising candor, relentless erudition, and an all encompassing pathos. Perhaps Doubiago’s most masterful work, El Nino is a titanic work that not only taps into a wellspring of emotional resonance, but also has the kind of literary value that few works ever attain, but many aspire to. From the archive of Thomas Rain Crowe, the legendary American poet and co-authorial founder of the Second San Francisco Renaissance. For more information on the Thomas Rain Crowe archive (assembled & curated by Third Mind Books), see our book Starting From San Francisco: Thomas Rain Crowe in Conversation with Third Mind Books (item #3071) & the catalog for the Crowe archive (see item #1010), which contains several excerpts and quotations from the book as well as a full listing of the archive’s contents, which are now being offered for sale individually on the Third Mind Books site. Signed in thin black ink at title page, the author has signed her name and left her signature lipstick mark and an inscription that reads: “For Thomas Rain Crowe. El Nino her most el nino grande gracias! Sharon Doubiago Nov 2, 1992. ‘Take this you castrators and decapitators!’” Softcover. First edition though not explicated as such at copyright page, presumed first printing though similarly not explicated. Book is in very fine condition with only minor wear to fine edges, and light smudging to front and back covers. Very Fine. [Item #7400]

Price: $45.00