XOXOX Press

Telling Lives

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Oral history gathers important material that might otherwise be lost forever. Not everyone can write, but with a keen and devoted listener and recorder, even those who might not write can weave a life story that has value for others — for families and friends, descendants, and a wider audience for first-hand history.

Among our books, To Be A Man by Johnnie Wilson, Jr. is a significant contribution to our oral history — the amazing life story of a boy who survived and thrived after his family’s murder in the old south, who traveled the country in search of a life, played Negro League Baseball, and settled in San Francisco to work as a longshoreman and build his own life and family. Johnnie’s life, as relayed by the masterful listener/writer Susan Gluck Rothenberg, is a signal tale of 20th-century African-American experience.

“Real history is about real people, and when it is told in their own words, their story becomes a vital part of ours. Here is an unusually compelling story to add to our own.” Rev. Professor Peter J. Gomes, Harvard university

Fielding Dawson

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Fielding Dawson’s fiction, essays and art/literary criticism appeared in books, magazines, anthologies and newspapers in the U.S. and abroad for over thirty years. He published 23 books during his lifetime, including stories, novels, memoirs and poems. His writing roots reach back to Black Mountain College in 1949, where he went to study art and stayed to write and make images. After years spent writing in New York City, he taught writing in U.S. prisons for 17 years, while also working with at-risk teenagers in alternative high schools. Fielding was chairman of the PEN Prison Writing Committee and director of the PEN Prison Writing Workshop Program. His literary archives are held by the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut at Storrs.

Robert Flanagan

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Author of the Marine Corps novel Maggot (Warner Books) and the short story collections Naked to Naked Goes (Scribner’s) and Loving Power (Bottom Dog), Robert Flanagan was born in Toledo, Ohio. He worked as a dishwasher, night watchman and janitor before serving in the Marine Corps Reserve and attending the University of Toledo and the University of Chicago. The cruel and beautiful sport of boxing has been his long-time passion. Taught the rudiments of the sport by his father, an ex-marine combat vet and amateur southpaw lightweight, he sparred ineptly at the YMCA in Toledo and boxed in a few platoon bouts at Camp Geiger from which he received two detached retinas. Retired from Ohio Wesleyan University, where he was Professor of English and director of creative writing, Flanagan at present is at work on a novel, Champions, and still works the peanut and heavy bags in his basement. He lives in Delaware, Ohio with his wife Katy.

Mike Newell

admin — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 16:45:47 +0000

Mike Newell is the author of No Bottom: In Conversation with Barry Lopez, which includes what reviewers have described as a relaxed, wide-ranging and original interview and a critical inquiry that greatly advances scholarship on Lopez’s writing. Newell previously published three books of poetry — uNderground Fires, The Unlived Life and Aestivation — and is listed in the directory of Poets and Writers. Following his years as a wildland firefighter in Alaska in the 1970s and early 1980s, he taught at-risk populations in a variety of venues that included public schools and correctional facilities. In 2000 he re-certified his wildland firefighting qualifications and has worked numerous Western fires. Newell lives and writes in upstate New York.

Michael Barich

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Michael Barich has taught at Kenyon College in Ohio since 1985. His courses there include Greek and Latin at all levels, literature in translation, and ancient history, and he has recently offered advanced Greek and Latin courses on Plato, Aristophanes, and Petronius. His scholarly work is devoted in particular to epic poetry and the literature of the early Roman Empire. Barich also has had a lifelong interest in astronomy, and in recent years has helped conduct public sessions at the Kenyon Franklin Miller Observatory to introduce students and others to the wider universe. He earned his B.A. at Haverford College and his Ph.D. at Yale.

Robert Hamburger

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Robert Hamburger’s first three books have been the subject of an exhibition at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture as well as television, radio and theatrical treatments. They form a loose nonfiction trilogy of studies of race and social injustice in contemporary America, and were praised by the likes of Dr. Kenneth Clark, Robert Coles, and Julian Bond. Hamburger has been a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Paris and in India and Morocco, and has had several residencies at the MacDowell Colony and at the Ossabaw Island Project. He has been the recipient of research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He lives in New York City.

Perry Carlton Lent

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Perry Carlton Lentz is undertaking his final year as Charles P. McIlvaine Professor of English at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. Perry joined the Kenyon faculty in 1969, and has served as department chair and as director of the Kenyon Exeter Program, which he helped establish in 1974. He is the author of the novelsThe Falling Hills and It Must Be Now the Kingdom Coming and a scholarly study of literature, war and history, Private Fleming at Chancellorsville. Born in Anniston, Alabama in 1943, he attended preparatory school at Indian Springs School, in Helena, Alabama. Married to Jane Anderson in 1965, he has two daughters, Robin and Emily, and five grandchildren.

Loranne Marsh Temple

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Loranne Marsh Temple grew up in Louisiana and now lives with her husband in Mount Vernon, Ohio. She began writing fiction after many years spent raising their six children. She won the “Best of Ohio Writers” prize for a story in 2000. Her stories have been published in Potpourri and The Ohio Writer magazine. She received her M.F.A. in creative writing from The Ohio State University in 2007. She recently completed a new novel calledLady House, the story of three generations of Louisiana family.

Fred Andrle

admin — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:19:28 +0000

Fred Andrle is known to many as the voice of WOSU-820/NPR radio in Columbus, Ohio. His twenty years of intelligent talk on WOSU’s public affairs show “Open Line” provide a rich, insightful alternative to normal talk-radio fare. What is less known is Fred’s dedication to the craft of poetry. He is the recipient of a Thurber House/Greater Columbus Arts Council Poetry Fellowship (2003) and Playwriting Fellowship (2000). Fred’s work has been published in Chiron Review, the anthology Prayers to Protest: Poems that Center and Bless Us (Pudding House) and The Columbus Dispatch. He is a member of the Columbus poetry writing and performing group “House of Toast.”

P.F. Kluge

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Novelist, journalist and teacher, P.F. Kluge is Writer in Residence at Kenyon College. His six previous novels include Eddie And The Cruisers and Biggest Elvis. His non-fiction books include The Edge of Paradise: America in Micronesia and Alma Mater, an account of a year in the life of Kenyon College. Two films, Dog Day Afternoon and Eddie And The Cruisers, have been based on his work. His journalism appears in National Geographic Traveler, where he is a contributing editor, and elsewhere. A native of Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, Kluge lives in Gambier, Ohio with his wife, Pamela Hollie.