From novels to films, our everyday lives are filled with stories that comfort and connect us and enable new ways of thinking. One of the most innovative writers in modern history, Virginia Woolf changed the landscape of fiction and challenged our notions of what it means to be human. Her novels invite readers to envision a world in which stories have the power to effect positive change. This book explores the phenomenon of story as practiced by Woolf, interpreting her work in the context of literary Darwinism-a critical approach focusing on patterns of innate human behavior.

From the poems of Anne Bradstreet, Phillis Wheatley, and Emily Dickinson, The FemPoetiks of American Poetry and Americana Music presents a discourse of female empowerment, dubbed the FemPoetiks. Situating the work of these poets in their historical eras, Nicole Blair considers a sampling of their poems side by side with a number of song lyrics by singer-songwriters Brandi Carlile, Rhiannon Giddens, and Lucinda Williams, having found commonalities of theme, motif, and language between them. Blair argues that while FemPoetiks has continued to develop in various ways in American poetry by women, that fact that this discourse finds expression in songs by Americana female artists indicates a matrilineal line of influence from the 1630s to today. In order to show the omnipresence of this powerful feminist discourse, she closes the book with eleven interviews she conducted with female singer-songwriters from around the United States. The phenomenon of FemPoetiks is not limited to the arts but extends into all areas of American life, from the domestic to the political. FemPoetiks is a woman's truth.