I must have decided that Trout Fishing in America would be the one to represent all that I had read and loved as a teenager. But who had that girl been? And did she notice that the woman on the cover had no name?
Ooligan Press has announced the release of Allison Green’s memoir, The Ghosts Who Travel with Me.
When the flower children were flocking to Woodstock, Allison Green was in preschool. As a teenager, yearning for the counterculture movement she felt she just missed, she discovered the writing of Richard Brautigan, finding refuge in his visions of America and refusal to conform. Years later, however, she questions her attachment. Why would a lesbian and feminist writer identify with an author whose most famous work doesn’t even name its female characters? Searching for the answer, Green embarks on a journey retracing Brautigan’s steps in Trout Fishing in America. Along the way, she examines how we relate to the influences in our lives—the ancestors who created us, the past that shaped us, the writers who changed the way we saw the world—and how these elements intertwine to make us who we are.
Allison Green lives in Seattle, Washington and is the author of Half-Moon Scar. Her writing has also been published by Calyx, Bellingham Review, Defunct, Zyzzyva, Yes! Magazine, The Commons, Jumpstart, Raven Chronicles, Willow Springs, Teacher’s Voice, and Evergreen Chronicles. The city of Seattle awarded her a CityArtist grant in 2010.
Ooligan Press is a not-for-profit, student-run general trade press with national distribution, publishing books honoring the cultural and natural diversity of the Pacific Northwest.
Praise for The Ghosts Who Travel with Me
“Charming, wry, and elliptical.”
—Diana Abu-Jaber, author of The Language of Baklava & Birds of Paradise
“It’s hard to stop these pages turning.”
—Corey Mesler, author of Following Richard Brautigan & Memphis Movie
“Readers need not be a child of the sixties or a fan of Brautigan to appreciate this book.”
—Melanie Hoffert, author of Prairie Silence
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