Attention Span 2012 | Elizabeth Treadwell

Joanna Kavenna | The Birth of Love | Holt | 2010 

Shannon Hayes | Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture | Left to Write | 2010

Donna de la Perriere | Saint Erasure | Talisman | 2010

Dana Teen Lomax | Disclosure | Black Radish | 2011

Leslie Marmon Silko | The Turquoise Ledge | Viking | 2010

Laura Grace Weldon | Free Range Learning | Hohm | 2010

“While a cursory look at history shows a swath of bloodshed across the centuries, this is hardly a balanced perspective. Tales of conquest and destruction never mention the real underpinning of civilization. Cooperation. Every minute of every day people take care of one another and uphold one another’s interests, as they have throughout time. Without careful tending, the sick would not heal, babies would not grow, and humanity would not flourish. Infinite acts of kindness and generosity have brought us to this moment in time.”

Scott Thurston, ed. | Talking Poetics | Shearsman | 2011

“Recently, yes, I have been trying to engage with the ethics of happiness. I think it’s much more difficult to write about happiness and from the position of happiness than it is to write from a position of sorrow and mourning and anger because, whilst sorrow can always be projected onto the whole population, happiness can’t be. So happiness feels like an indulgence of a private attitude which ought not interest anyone, whereas misery can elevate the personal into a universal condition. And yet, when you go back and you read Plato and Aristotle, they declare that happiness is the end of all politics, the pursuit of happiness is the aim and the goal of all political arrangements. It has an incredibly dense political meaning and history.”—Andrea Brady

Jeanette Winterson | Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? | Grove | 2011

For me this is her best thing since early days. “There was a time when record-keeping wasn’t an act of administration; it was an art form.”

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Elizabeth Treadwell‘s contributions to Attention Span for 2010, 2009, 2008. Return to 2012 directory.