"For centuries, writers have drawn inspiration from the Hudson River and its surroundings. John Burroughs, James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Edith Wharton all lived and worked in the region immortalized by the Hudson River School of painters. In River of Words, author Nina Shengold and photographer Jennifer May explore the current crop of Hudson Valley writers, offering intimate portraits of seventy-six contemporary writers who live and work in this magnificent and storied region. Included in this rich collection of emerging and established novelists, memoirists, poets, journalists, and screenwriters are Pulitzer Prize-winners John Ashbery and the late Frank McCourt, bestselling memoirists Julie Powell and Susan Orlean, and distinguished émigrés Chinua Achebe and Da Chen. What draws these writers together is not only their devotion to their art but their love and affection for the Hudson Valley. Through words and photographs, River of Words offers an inside perspective on the literary life, the craft of writing, and the pull of this distinctive American landscape"--P. [2] of dust jacket.