 Cover of 1992 Vintage edition | |
| Author | Lorene Cary |
|---|---|
| Genre | Memoir |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf (1st. ed.) |
| ISBN | 978-0-679-73745-2 |
| Followed by | The Price of a Child (novel, 1995) |
Black Ice is a memoir by American author Lorene Cary. First published in 1991, it relates the African American author's experiences at the elite St. Paul's boarding school in New Hampshire. The book, Cary's first publication and the stepping stone to her career as a writer, was a critical and commercial success.
Cary grew up in a working-class background [1] in Philadelphia. In 1972, she was invited to the elite St. Paul's boarding school in New Hampshire, on scholarship, [2] as only the second African-American female student. [2] She spent two years at St. Paul's, graduating in 1974, [3] and then worked as a journalist for publications including Time . After first writing about her experience at St. Paul's in a magazine article in 1988, [4] she published a more complete memoir, Black Ice.
The book was published in 1991 by Alfred A. Knopf, [2] and Phillip Lopate, reviewing the book for The New York Times called it a "stunning memoir". [4] The book, "bruisingly honest about class, race and sex in America", [1] found success with the critics and was shortlisted the same year by The New York Times as "summer reading"; [5] her first publication, it was republished the next year by Vintage Books. [6]
James Alan McPherson was an American essayist and short-story writer. He was the first African-American writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and was included among the first group of artists who received a MacArthur Fellowship. At the time of his death, McPherson was a professor emeritus of fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in the United States. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech, Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the early 20th century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes.
Phillips Academy is a co-educational college-preparatory school for boarding and day students located in Andover, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. The academy enrolls approximately 1,150 students in grades 9 through 12, including postgraduate students. It is part of the Eight Schools Association and the Ten Schools Admissions Organization.
Phillips Exeter Academy is a coeducational university preparatory private school for boarding and day students in grades 9 through 12, including postgraduate students. Located in Exeter, New Hampshire and founded in 1781, it is the sixth-oldest boarding school in the United States.
Joyce Maynard is an American novelist and journalist. She began her career in journalism in the 1970s, writing for several publications, most notably Seventeen magazine and The New York Times. Maynard contributed to Mademoiselle and Harrowsmith magazines in the 1980s, while also beginning a career as a novelist with the publication of her first novel, Baby Love (1981). Her second novel, To Die For (1992), drew on the Pamela Smart murder case and was adapted into the 1995 film of the same name. Maynard received significant media attention in 1998 with the publication of her memoir At Home in the World, in which she tells of her affair with J. D. Salinger.
The New York Review of Books is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of important books is an indispensable literary activity. Esquire called it "the premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English language." In 1970, writer Tom Wolfe described it as "the chief theoretical organ of Radical Chic".
Dame Antonia Susan Duffy, known professionally by her former married name, A. S. Byatt, was an English critic, novelist, poet and short story writer. Her books have been translated into more than thirty languages.
St. Paul's School is a college-preparatory, coeducational boarding school in Concord, New Hampshire, affiliated with the Episcopal Church. The school's 2,000-acre (8.1 km2), or 3.125 square mile, campus serves 540 students, who come from 37 states and 28 countries.
Donald Andrew Hall Jr. was an American poet, writer, editor, and literary critic. He was the author of over 50 books across several genres from children's literature, biography, memoir, essays, and including 22 volumes of verse. Hall was a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard University, and Christ Church, Oxford. Early in his career, he became the first poetry editor of The Paris Review (1953–1961), the quarterly literary journal, and was noted for interviewing poets and other authors on their craft.
Eileen Myles is a LAMBDA Literary Award-winning American poet and writer who has produced more than twenty volumes of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, libretti, plays, and performance pieces over the last three decades. Novelist Dennis Cooper has described Myles as "one of the savviest and most restless intellects in contemporary literature." The Boston Globe described them as "that rare creature, a rock star of poetry." In 2012, Myles received a Guggenheim Fellowship to complete Afterglow, which gives both a real and fantastic account of a dog's life. Myles uses they/them pronouns.
Phillip Lopate is an American film critic, essayist, fiction writer, poet, and teacher.
Leonard Lopate is an American radio personality. He is the host of the radio talk show Leonard Lopate at Large, broadcast on WBAI, and the former host of the public radio talk show The Leonard Lopate Show, broadcast on WNYC. He first broadcast on WKCR, the college radio station of Columbia University, and then later on WBAI, before moving to WNYC.
Elaine Goodale Eastman (1863–1953) and Dora Read Goodale (1866–1953) were American poets and sisters from Massachusetts. They published their first poetry as children still living at home, and were included in Edmund Clarence Stedman's classic An American Anthology (1900).
Douglas Century is a Canadian-American author and journalist. He was educated at Princeton University.
Black ice is hazardous frozen water.
Meghan O'Rourke is an American nonfiction writer, poet and critic.
Lorene Cary is an American author, educator and social activist.
Roxane Gay is an American writer, professor, editor, and social commentator. Gay is the author of The New York Times best-selling essay collection Bad Feminist (2014), as well as the short story collection Ayiti (2011), the novel An Untamed State (2014), the short story collection Difficult Women (2017), and the memoir Hunger (2017).
Richard Sumner Meryman was an American journalist, biographer, and Life magazine writer and editor. He pioneered the monologue-style personality profile, beginning with a famous Marilyn Monroe interview, published two days before her death in 1962, which became the basis for a 1992 HBO program, Marilyn: The Last Interview.
Bernice L. McFadden is an American novelist. She has also written humorous erotica under the pseudonym Geneva Holliday. Author of fifteen novels, she is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Tulane University in New Orleans.