Surrendering
to a Distant Other It's mea culpa here at Ocean Cooperative. Establishing our new publishing venture in 2009 consumed a lot of the time we needed to assess a number of excellent submissions to the Novel of Promise competition. We fell, well, behind. But here at last is our winner and we feel it's been worth the wait. Cassandra Krivy Hirsch, a Toronto-born Canadian now resident in Philadelphia, is heading down the home stretch of her journalesque novel, Seagoing Vessels. We chose Seagoing from among the 2009 entries because it so charmingly achieves its author's first goal: to capture the writing style, and through that style the character, of a person who lived long ago and in another place. This may or may not always be the objective of novelists who assay first-person historical narratives, but Krivy Hirsch gives an intelligent account of how she became dissatisfied with a protagonist too like herself and how she eventually "surrendered" to a more distant other. The careful creation of Marianne Elizabeth Parsons is only part of the author's challenge, as she told us in a short interview. She must also shape the journal form to a historical novel's demands for plot development and pace. We hope her struggle to overcome the obstacles can be documented on these pages in the near future. Stay tuned. But for now, read a few pages taken from Seagoing Vessels -- Parsons' private diary. And go here to see what Cassandra Krivy Hirsch has to say about her creation. And then don't neglect to submit a chapter from your novel-in-progress. Go to the competition page right now! Good luck and good writing!
Robert Buckland, Publisher, Ocean Cooperative Publishing |
Cassandra Krivy Hirsch
talks about the search for her narrator's voice
THE NOVEL OF PROMISE COMPETITION RULES AND PRIZES
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