Alter Alter - Toti O'Brien

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Résumé :
This book is a collection of short stories, articulated in 7 sections. Cassandra is about vision. A premonition. It is loosely related to neuro difference, mental illness, mental states often considered altered. Hell is about death (as an ultimately altered state), but not only. Also about our imaginary of the afterlife, especially about the figure of the devil/demon, the idea of evil. Mozart, a section about love, declined by a number of different love stories, some happy some not, some complex, some linear. In Color is also about love, but from a child's point of view. It is about childhood. I should say girlhood. About coming of age, but it goes backwards and closes upon infant memories. Alter Alter contains the title story, and it focuses on the main theme of the book. It contains several stories of sisterhood, either biological or not. All the stories in Long Distance add to the relationship with the other an element of displacement and remoteness. Drift amplifies the distance and resumes a surreal tone, similar to that of the first section....

Biographie:
Toti O'Brien is the Italian Accordionist with the Irish Last Name. Born in Rome, living in Los Angeles, she is an artist, musician and dancer.

Sommaire:
TOTI O'BRIEN is the Italian Accordionist with the Irish last name. She was born in Rome, Italy, raised in Sicily and France. After touring Europe and Brazil with her itinerant theater, in the early nineties, she established herself in Los Angeles where she makes a living as a self-employed artist, performing musician and professional dancer. O'Brien's first book of stories, Africa, was published in 1990. It was followed by another short story collection, Reversed Memories, two illustrated children books and an essay collection, Lanterna Magica, gathering selected work out of her long-term collaboration with Italian journals and magazines. O'Brien started writing in the English language in 2004. Since then, her poetry, fiction and non-fiction were published in hundreds of journals and anthologies in the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, India, Australia, and all over the world. Her most recent appearances include The Moth, The Hamilton Stone, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and World Literature Today. Her poetry collection Other Maidens (BlazeVOX, 2020) and a prose collection, Pages of a Broken Diary (Pskj's Porch, 2021), are about to be released. Her work was nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fiction, Best American Essay, the Pushcart, and various other prizes. Her memoir 'Nicotine' won a nonfiction prose award in 2018. Her essay 'Blur In The Front Line' won the Anthony Award in 2016. Besides her creative writing, she contributes articles and reviews about art, music, film, literature and civilization to several magazines. She also translates poetry and prose from the Italian, the Spanish, and the French. O'Brien's multimedia artwork was exhibited in group and solo shows in Europe and the US, since the early nineties. Her paintings, sculptures, collages and textiles were featured in many publications, and she has produced book covers and illustrations....