St Louis Writers Guild 100th Anniversary Members Anthology

A showcase of current St. Louis Writers Guild Members featuring short stories, poems, essays, and flash fiction in honor of the Guild's 100th Anniversary. Founded in 1920, members come from all aspects of the writing world, from novelists, to freelance writers, memoirists, poets, and more. St. Louis Writers Guild celebrates the diverse literary community of this city. This anthology features works of 34 current members and honors the legacy of the past century.

This introductory text explores the lives of 100 Black women and their unique and meaningful legacies upon the history, society, and culture of the USA. Today, the names and remarkable achievements of Black women such as Maya Angelou, Serena Williams, Michelle Obama, and Oprah Winfrey are well known to many Americans. Yet throughout American history, many lesser-known Black women like them have made invaluable contributions to sports, science, the arts, medicine, politics, and civil rights. Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, who published the first newspaper written for and by African American women, championed the cause of women's suffrage. Matilda Sissieretta Jones, whose father was an enslaved person, toured Europe and performed at the White House in front of four different presidents as one of the great sopranos of her generation. Augusta Savage, overcoming racism and sexism, became one of the most celebrated sculptors in history. This book serves as an important reminder that the story of America cannot be told without the Black women who, with strength and determination, have always pushed America forward even when others held them back.

It's been five months since twenty-two-year-old Louisa Berry's cherished grandfather died, and although she's determined to live a life that honors his memory, she's dropped out of college twice, and her refusal to play the corporate game has cost her three jobs. She thinks her new position-a live-in secretary to an elderly author, Marguerite Roberts-is perfect.But the moment she arrives at the Roberts' house, Louisa senses an undercurrent of menace. The wheelchair-bound Marguerite is confined to her room, and the family members can barely disguise their hostility toward one another. A series of threatening events soon makes Louisa question whether her growing affection for Marguerite is enough to keep her in a house in which she can trust no one-not even Marguerite's grandson, with whom she is falling in love. As the danger escalates, Louisa is trapped. She can't leave Marguerite alone and unprotected. But she may be risking her own life if she stays.

Vivian Gibson's bestselling memoir of growing up in the 1950s in a segregated St. Louis neighborhood has been hailed by critics as "a spare, elegant jewel of a work" and "a love letter to Gibson's childhood."

A major literary event—the eagerly anticipated publication of a long-lost novel from legendary writer and three-time Pulitzer Prize nominee John Oliver Killens, hailed as the founding father of the Black Arts Movement and mentor to celebrated writers, including Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni, Arthur Flowers, and Terry McMillan. Wanderlust has taken Jimmy Jay Leander Johnson on numerous adventures, from Mississippi to Washington D.C., Vietnam, London and eventually to Africa, to the fictitious Independent People’s Democratic Republic of Guanaya, where the young musician hopes to “find himself.” But this small sliver of a country in West Africa, recently freed from British colonial rule, is thrown into turmoil with the discovery of cobanium—a radioactive mineral 500 times more powerful than uranium, making it irresistible for greedy speculators, grifters, and charlatans. Overnight, outsiders descend upon the sleepy capital city looking for “a piece of the action.” When a plot to assassinate Guanaya’s leader is discovered, Jimmy Jay—a dead ringer for the Prime Minister—is enlisted in a counter scheme to foil the would-be coup. He will travel to America with half of Guanaya’s cabinet ministers to meet with the President of the United States and address the UN General Assembly, while the rest of the cabinet will remain in Guanaya with the real Prime Minister. What could go wrong? Everything. Set in the 1980s, this smart, funny, dazzlingly brilliant novel is a literary delight—and the final gift from an American literary legend.