Kissing The Hag

Kissing the Hag by Emma Restall Orr is based upon the old tale of The Marriage of Sir Gawain, and carries us from girlish innocence through to the nauseating horror of the hag - the raw side, the dark side, the inside of a woman's.

"'Kissing The Hag' is a dark night of the soul, a harrowing trip into the battered heart of the narrator.... Mr. Quigley... brings us through this night, and into the day...with grace, where new life and forgiveness abide." Bret Lott, author of "Jewel" (an Oprah pick) Since the suicide of his younger brother, Julien has burrowed away from life, turning his back on family and friends. His only human contacts are the denizens of a downtown Boston homeless shelter where he works the graveyard shift. One in particular - Rosie, an Irish "hag" - helps guide Julien through a particularly dark night, as he traverses the dim caverns and blind curves of the human spirit. The single night is filled with flashbacks, interactions with shelter transients, and Irish storytelling, that Julien hopes against hope might help him find some kind of resolution and purpose. Timothy Quigley deftly interweaves Celtic mythology, Christian dogma, street smarts, New Age drunk talk and mad men's ravings, to create a deeply compassionate portrait of a jaded, disillusioned man's struggle to get his life back on track. Timothy Quigley's award-winning stories have appeared in The Chariton Review, Line Zero Journal of Art and Literature, La Ostra Magazine, Writer's World, as well as various online publications. He is also the screenwriter of two short films; one animated, and the other a live action adapted from one of his short stories. He is currently working on a feature-length film adaptation of Kissing the Hag, as well as a collection of short stories. Quigley received his MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Norwich University, and currently teaches writing and literature at Salem State University and Wentworth Institute in Boston. " Timothy Quigley's fiction]... is wonderful... buoyant and lively and crackling with fascinating energies and tensions." Dr. James D'Agostino, author of "Nude with Anything" and Editor of "The Chariton Review"

In the first five centuries of the common era, the kiss was a distinctive and near-ubiquitous marker of Christianity. Although Christians did not invent the kiss—Jewish and pagan literature is filled with references to kisses between lovers, family members, and individuals in relationships of power and subordination—Christians kissed one another in highly specific settings and in ways that set them off from the non-Christian population. Christians kissed each other during prayer, Eucharist, baptism, and ordination and in connection with greeting, funerals, monastic vows, and martyrdom. As Michael Philip Penn shows in Kissing Christians, this ritual kiss played a key role in defining group membership and strengthening the social bond between the communal body and its individual members. Kissing Christians presents the first comprehensive study of the ritual kiss and how controversies surrounding it became part of larger debates regarding the internal structure of Christian communities and their relations with outsiders. Penn traces how Christian writers exalted those who kissed only fellow Christians, proclaimed that Jews did not have a kiss, prohibited exchanging the kiss with potential heretics, privileged the confessor's kiss, prohibited Christian men and women from kissing each other, and forbade laity from kissing clergy. Kissing Christians also investigates connections between kissing and group cohesion, kissing practices and purity concerns, and how Christian leaders used the motif of the kiss of Judas to examine theological notions of loyalty, unity, forgiveness, hierarchy, and subversion. Exploring connections between bodies, power, and performance, Kissing Christians bridges the gap between cultural and liturgical approaches to antiquity. It breaks significant new ground in its application of literary and sociological theory to liturgical history and will have a profound impact on these fields.

RADICALLY REIMAGINE THE SECOND HALF OF LIFE “There can be a certain perverse pleasure, as well as a sense of rightness and beauty, in insisting on flowering just when the world expects you to become quiet and diminish.” — from the book For any woman over fifty who has ever asked “What now? Who do I want to be?” comes a life-changing book showing how your next phase of life may be your most dynamic yet. As mythologist and psychologist Sharon Blackie describes it, midlife is the threshold to decades of opportunity and profound transformation, a time to learn, flourish, and claim the desires and identities that are often limited during earlier life stages. This is a time for gaining new perspectives, challenging and evolving belief systems, exploring callings, uncovering meaning, and ultimately finding healing for accumulated wounds. Western folklore and mythology are rife with brilliantly creative, fulfilled, feisty, and furious role models for aging women, despite our culture’s focus on youthfulness. Blackie explores these archetypes in Hagitude, presenting them in a way sure to appeal to contemporary women. Drawing inspiration from these examples as well as modern mentors, you can reclaim midlife as a liberating, alchemical moment rich with possibility and your elder years as a path to feminine power.

Taste the Forbidden History. Witchcraft owned your skin before you ever knew you did. You slipped into it down the drain-pipe of a birth cord, and it had you sewn into the flesh-purse of your baby hide. Many tales have come down to us over the past few hundred years, stories of outsiders reflected in a mirror darkly. The People of the Outside is a different sort of history, some of the deepest buried sediment to be found in a cave and sifted for traces of the past. It is a history of the dust. It pulls apart binaries and invites us to use our hybrid brains - every tool, from science to intuition - to untangle the elf-locks that endure as a clever-cord, an elongated witch's ball, one that reaches all the way back to our own almost extinct ancestors. Welcome to the witchcraft of the dispossessed, from the almost until recently forgotten forebears to eating people, and an unflinching examination of what it means to be a person of the outside.

An Unexpected Passion Young widow, Lady Jenova of Gunlinghorn knows she must marry again, but is unsure of the bridegroom that has been chosen. However, she knows she can trust her devilishly handsome childhood friend, Lord Henry, who now advises the King! When they are trapped together by a winter tempest, she and Henry shock themselves by surrendering to a wildly passionate indiscretion. And suddenly Jenova must rethink her wedding plans... “Sara Bennett is one of today’s most gifted romance writers. She writes with passion and truly gets into the ‘heads’ of her characters making them come to life for all of us to enjoy.”—Joyfully Reviewed “Bennett gets this true-to-life tale of medieval life exactly right.”—>i?Romantic Times

Sleeping Beauty has sworn off kissing... Emma awakens to an entirely different world than the one she lived in a thousand years ago, and although she's the real Sleeping Beauty, her life is no fairy tale. After parting ways with her supposed Prince Charming, she's determined to be a normal girl—she hides her magic and swears off kissing strange men. But her gorgeous boss Michael knows there 's something unusual about Emma, and he thinks she's as infuriating as she is beautiful. Now Emma needs to teach Michael a lesson, which means mastering her magic. She knows she's flirting with danger, but after one look at Michael's perfect lips, all she can think is, "What's another thousand years ... ?" Welcome to the fractious fairy tale world of Kristine Grayson, where the bumpy road to happily ever after is paved with surprises ... Praise for Wickedly Charming "Unusual, whimsical, and wickedly clever, this funny romp takes a decidedly offbeat look at fairy tales from the characters' point of view, with delightful, magical results."—Library Journal