Linda Annas Ferguson
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Originally a native of North Carolina, Linda Annas Ferguson now makes her home in Charleston, South Carolina. Before becoming a novelist, she authored and published five collections of poetry and was a past Poetry Fellow for the South Carolina Arts Commission. She was also a past recipient of the Poetry Fellowship of the South Carolina Academy of Authors, a Poet-in-Residence for the Gibbes Museum of Art, and a featured writer at the Library of Congress Poetry at Noon Series. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Beyond Forgetting: Prose and Poetry About Alzheimer’s Disease (Kent State University Press) and Seeking: Prose and Poetry Inspired by Art (University of South Carolina Press). Her work is archived in the Furman University Special Collections at the James B. Duke Library.
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What the Mirrors Knew
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Fiction
Every human journey is one of transition, but Anna Grace O’Neill’s is anything but conventional. Living alone in a bungalow on the riverbank of Charleston, South Carolina, and disenchanted by a less-than-satisfying life, she discovers once-buried revelations in a journal left by her deceased and beloved grandmother, Aine. The mystery of why her grandfather, Angus, died before he could accompany Aine to America from Ireland after their teenage marriage years ago is one that she is driven to resolve. On her quest, she is called, as if by their spirits themselves, to embark on nothing less than a pilgrimage to the home of their youth. Their native land is part of the equally ethereal and earthborn Irish “Wild West” coast, where myths are a national heritage. Encountering surreal experiences, she is often unsure if she has been “taken astray” to another dimension by the invisible forces maintained in Celtic folklore, where alchemy and the ephemeral aren’t foreign concepts. She is drawn off course when her path crosses that of an unexpected admirer, Kevin, a quantum physicist turned roving magician, yielding life-shifting events. Her formidable odyssey, as much within as external, creates a conflict in how she maneuvers the rearrangement of her once-mundane world. Enriched with literary style and sensibilities, the story is interwoven with philosophy, magical realism, spirituality, romance, and alternate realities. Anna Grace’s struggles are the core incentive that keeps us rooting for her and leaves the reader’s hand resting on the back cover, deliberating well past the last line. 
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Dirt Sandwich
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Poetry
If I could put it in one word, the theme of Dirt Sandwich is “impermanence” and how transient we are in the world. The intrinsic idea that we all came from dirt and return to dirt is a thread throughout the book, as well as water, an elementary and essential substance of our corporeal being. The poems take us from Adam and Eve to the natural entropic demise of all things that live in time. Along the way, we stop to weigh all that we hold and release but can never keep.” 
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Stepping on Cracks in the Sidewalk
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Poetry
Linda Annas Ferguson's elegiac poems about her father and mother, both of whom worked in textile mills, capture the lives of a dying generation of southern laborers. They came from the farms and hills to the small towns, married and raised their children, and worked loyally at their jobs until the jobs were no more. When her father returns from his last night on the graveyard shift, "white lint clinging to his hair/ like a disintegrated halo," we celebrate the unsung heroism of these men and women whom Ferguson depicts with the love of a daughter and the sure hand of a mature poet. |
Last Chance to Be Lost
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Poetry
In Last Chance to Be Lost, Linda Annas Ferguson has created a gem in which each facet both mirrors a unique experience of love and allows us to peer deep beneath the shiny surface into the lives that make love real. Her visions are invitations to explore and gain understanding of those formative moments that turn the child toward maturity without giving up the seeds of youth. These are poems about the big issues — love, life, loss, and growth.
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Bird Missing from One Shoulder
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Poetry
The narrative spell of this book is as strong as that of a good novel, allowing us to enter the life of a Southern cotton mill family and experience its warmth and difficult struggles head-on. Ferguson's work is both tender and fearless. Bird Missing from One Shoulder contains poems about death, but also the small, happy moments of one family's day-to-daylife. It is sprinkled with surprising and original tidbits. " I could smell the boy in you,' the poet tells us in "First Kiss."
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It's Hard to Hate a Broken Thing
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Poetry
It's Hard to Hate a Broken Thing contains the wise, tender reflections of a poet willing to probe the past without trying to prettify it. Linda Annas Ferguson keeps her eyes open, her ears tuned to the world. Her subjects are primal ones of parent and child, light and dark, hope and leave-taking---and, unequivocally, death. Her deep-felt truths are likely to be found in the smallest detail, from an empty apron pocket to the coat hanging from the nail of the bedroom door. My advice is to read the poems, and then read them again--and again. |
