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Reviews & Biography
“Ritchie's resonant writing evokes humanity's most endearing traits.
Whether showcasing American diplomats, struggling fishermen or worried
parents, her work will remind readers of the many serendipitous
connections
and missed opportunities that continually swirl in the world around them.
Three of the four sections in this twenty-one story collection are
composed of interwoven tales, each of which can stand alone. In
Haste is Ritchie's twelfth book.
The first section, "The Lady in Eight," is a four-part
narrative about romantic
encounters. Its opening piece, "In Haste I Write
You This Note," presents a woman's internal rumblings as she weighs
the pros and cons of inviting a
neighbor to her home. Her obsessive search for the right words--how does
one invite a male acquaintance to one's apartment?--is poignant,
wrenching.
Three other vignettes round out this section. The man's perspective and
observations about the meeting and ensuing flirtation are offered;
likewise,
readers will feel desires both painful and primal as they grapple with the
longing the female presents.
The second series of stories, "Communications from
Paradise," assess the
ways individuals utilize psychological denial. Some literally deny all
unpleasantness, whether a poisonous snake or an unfaithful mate. Others,
like the protagonist in "The Big Sixtieth," confront misery
head-on, bravely
struggling to make sense of a best friend's unexpected death.
Section Three, "Marching On," addresses relationships and
the ties that
both bind and strangle. "Marching to War," one of the most
moving stories in
the anthology, is written in the voice of a woman whose only daughter has
enlisted in the military. The mother, a single-parent, has been too busy raising her brood and working to actively protest violence. Now, she
worries
that her lack of political engagement has unwittingly caused her child to
accept armed conflict as inevitable. The ten other pieces in this section
are equally compelling. Domestic violence, human/animal communications,
poverty and divorce, all are treated with freshness--an emotional
clarity--that startles.
Similarly, "Re-Inventing the Archives," exudes honesty
and integrity. In this tale, an adult daughter attempts to decipher
which family legacies to keep and which to discard. It is riveting material.
Ritchie writes with a poet's finesse, a psychologist’s insight
and a
sage's humanism. It is a brilliant mix, rare, heartfelt and wise.”
-- Eleanor J. Bader, FOREWORD, June
2000
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“This set of stories is
about regular people who are anything but average. They yearn and strive
to be better people, exploring the depths of life and existence, in both
their successes and failures. A number of the stories are woven together
like a beautiful tapestry of human experience, showing how lives
intersect, how profoundly we influence each other, how dependent upon one
another we really are.” -- Kevin West, the judge in the Washington
Writers' Publishing House Premiere Fiction competition, 1999.
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"Both Monica and Hilary should read this..maybe even the whole country!!"
-- from
Carpenter Gothic
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On Flying Time: Stories and Half-Stories, which includes four PEN Syndicated Fiction
winners:
"A quality often lauded as the mark of a brilliant writer is the ability to
understand and celebrate difference among people. Ritchie achieves this with stunning
dexterity....Her characters are all travellers, however, whether they move physically or
within their minds, and they share their experiences...with genuine curiosity....These
stories are brilliant explorations of humanity that not only deserve but virtually need to
be read and understood in every community. -- Lindsay Throm, ABA Booklist
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"Flying Time, by Elisavietta Ritchie, Signal Books, is the first full length
collection of prose from a poet who richly commends words and memories, infusing these
stories with vivid, tight, penetrating language. She remembers walks with her father,
waterside snippets, a lifetime of treasures, with a final walk beside his wheelchair
toward a picnic of eels. Ritchie shares teatime in Leningrad, dreams and nightmares of War
years on the farm, arguments over the costs of coffins, impressions of priests in a
Russian church far from home in Chicago. And delicious, mysterious descriptions of bugs,
flowers, birds, brick walls, and efforts to scare away rats with a cap pistol discovered
in a neglected attic. She even captures the occasional, strange allure of sorting laundry:
'Our king-sized sheets like tablecloths for the banquets of giants, pillowcases, despite
so many washings, still hold our dreams.' More than 50 stories here, a constellation of
bright, illuminating tales." -- The Book Reader
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"I read Flying Time with enormous enjoyment. It reveals delicate witchery and a
teeming imagination....I was crossing horizons of the spirit." --
D.M. Thomas,
author of The White Hotel
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"Elisavietta Ritchie delivers: language that makes music in your head, haunting
images that cut close to the bone, wonderfully authentic explorations of a wide range of
human experiences. She weaves a magical world that will draw you back again and
again." Sandra Martz, editor and publisher, Papier Mache Press
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"Glows with the right word in the absolutely right place, unerringly chosen to set
the mood and tone. Hints of Dostoyevsky and the families of Tolstoy in the works of a
woman of today. Provocative!" -- Mary Sue Koeppel, Kalliope: A Journal of Women's Art
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"All good poets cannot write good prose, but Lisa Ritchie can. The sharply observed
details, the detached but intimate voice, the subtle grasp of emotional configurations of
these stories and memoirs glow like the blue and gold domes of Russian churches."
-- Lloyd Van Brunt, author of Poems New and Selected 1962-1992, Working Firewood For The
Night
Other Books
On Tightening The Circle Over Eel Country, which won the Great Lakes Colleges
Association's "New Writer's Prize for Best First Book of Poetry 1975-76":
"Elisavietta Ritchie's poetry combines a Byzantine elegance with straightforward
plain style honesty. The extraordinary range of her interests -- work, love, sensuality,
and man's plight in a forlorn civilization -- is reinforced by her exquisite regard for
language and a lively fascination with the possibilities of form." William Packard,
editor, New York Quarterly
On Raking The Snow, winner of the Washington Writers' Publishing House 1981 competition:
"Elisavietta Ritchie's work is original, varied and exciting, and has been growing
steadily in scope and control. The core of her poems is vitality. Grim, joyous, exuberant
or erotic, they have a strong and vivid life." Josephine Jacobsen, poetry consultant
at the Library of Congress, 1971-1973; author of On The Island and In The Crevice of
Time.
Elisavietta Ritchie's fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, photographs,
and translations from Russian and French have appeared in numerous publications including
Poetry, The American Scholar, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post,
National Geographic, New York Quarterly, Confrontation, Press, New Letters, Kalliope,
Nimrod, Canadian Women's Studies, Calyx, Maryland Poetry Review, Iris; anthologies
including When I'm An Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple; If I Had My Life To Live Over I Would
Pick More Daisies; The Tie That Binds; If I Had A Hammer; Grow Old Along With Me / The
Best Is Yet To Be; Generation To Generation; Diamonds Are A Girl's Best
Friend; and many
others.
In Haste I Write You This Note: Stories & Half-Stories won the
premiere Washington Writers' Publishing House Fiction Competition (2000).
Flying Time: Stories
& Half-Stories includes four PEN Syndicated Fiction winners. Tightening The Circle Over Eel Country won the Great Lakes Colleges Association's
"New Writer's Prize for Best First Book of Poetry 1975-76." Raking The Snow won
the Washington Writer's Publishing House 1981-82 competition. Individual poems, stories
and collections have been winners or finalists in many competitions, and she has been
nominated for several Pushcart Prizes. Her work has been translated into a dozen languages.
Her other books of poetry are The Arc of the Storm; Elegy For The Other
Woman; the
chapbooks A Wound-Up Cat and Other Bedtime Stories; A Sheaf of Dreams And Other
Games;
Moving To Larger Quarters; The Problem With Eden, and two novellas in verse,
Timbot and
Wild Garlic: The Journal of Maria X.
Ritchie has read at the Library of Congress, Harbourfront, Folger Library,
Pittsburgh International Forum, many libraries, universities, schools and other cultural
centers in the United States, Canada, Australia, Russia, and under the auspices of the
United States Information Agency, in Brazil, around the Far East, and the Balkans. She
often teaches writing workshops for adults and children, and occasionally lectures to
teachers on the poetry-in-the-school program.
She founded The Wineberry Press, and for three years was president of Washington Writer's
Publishing House. Books edited include The Dolphin's Arc: Poems on Endangered Creatures of
the Sea. Her photographs have appeared in The New York Times etc.
Education includes: The Sorbonne, University of Paris, where she received a diploma with
"Mention Très Bien" (equivalent to magna cum laude) from the Cours de
Civilisation Française; Cornell University; University of California at Berkeley (combined
BA in French, Russian and English); Georgetown University (Russian courses); American
University (MA in French literature, minor in Russian studies); The Writer's Center; and
the Toronto Martial Arts Commission.
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