Girl with red hair

Posted by linemaria on January 26th, 2011 with Comments Off

From the press release:
When the young red-haired Danish writer, Line-Maria Lång, was in Paris in the spring of 2010, she sent her translator a photograph that a friend the photographer Lotte Mia Wewer had taken on the lake of the castle in Versaille.  The translator – Thomas E. Kennedy – was so taken by the photograph that he forwarded it to Walter Cummins, his partner in the newly-established publishing venture, Serving House Books (www.ServingHouseBooks.com).   Cummins was also taken by the photograph and wrote back to Kennedy with a proposal that they commission twenty prose writers and poets to write something inspired by it.
The invitations went out to twenty selected writers in various places in Europe and in the U.S; the result is the book:  The Girl With Red Hair.   The authors of the twelve short stories, one personal essay, and seven poems inspired by the photograph of Line-Maria Lång include American national award winners (a National Book Award finalist, the winner of the AWP National Novel Award, a National Magazine Award winner, Pushcart Prize and O Henry Award winner) as well as distinguished Danish writers – Niels Hav, Dorthe Nors and Line-Maria Lång herself, all of whose work, in translation, has been prominent in the U.S. over the past year and nominated for several prizes.
Asked why he was so moved by the photograph, which appears on the cover of the book, as to launch the anthology, Walter Cummins replied that he was inspired by centuries of red hair lore, but especially the languorous photo of Line-Maria Lång who, in the Preface of the book, is referred to as its “Muse.”   Cummins noted that only two percent of the world’s population have red hair and the other ninety-eight percent have always been fascinated by red-heads.  He notes further that poets and writers have always been taken by red hair – from Sylvia Plath (“Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair…”) to the Gaelic bards (“Green eyes, red hair, long legs, devil inside her…”) to Mark Twain, who claimed that while the rest of us were descended from apes, red-heads were descended from cats!
Of the two co-editors, Cummins is himself the author of many books and stories and for nearly thirty years was editor of the prestigious American literary magazine The Literary Review (which in 2008 published a special issue on contemporary Danish literature), and Thomas E. Kennedy, an American living in Denmark for many years is the author of 25 books (including four novels set in Copenhagen) and a frequent translator of Danish authors.
The Girl With Red Hair will be launched on February 3rd 2011.