This project is a feminist study of the idiosyncratic oeuvre of Kathy Acker and how her unique art and politics, located at the explosive intersection of punk, postmodernism, and feminism, critiques and exemplifies late twentieth-century capitalism. There is no female or feminist writer like Kathy Acker (and probably no male either). Her body of work-nine novels, novellas, essays, reviews, poetry, and film scripts, published in a period spanning the 1970s to the mid 1990s-is the most developed body of contemporary feminist postmodernist work and of the punk aesthetic in a literary form. Some 20 years after her death, Kathy Acker: Punk Writer gives a detailed and comprehensive analysis of how Acker melds the philosophy and poetics of the European avant-garde with the vernacular and ethos of her punk subculture to voice an idiosyncratic feminist radical politics in literary form: a punk feminism. With its aesthetics of shock, transgression, parody, Debordian detournement, caricature, and montage, her oeuvre reimagines the fin-de-siecle United States as a schlock horror film for her punk girl protagonist: Acker's cipher for herself and other rebellious and nonconformist women. This approach will allow the reader to more fully understand Acker as a writer who inhabits an explosive and creative nexus of contemporary women's writing, punk culture, and punk feminism's reimagining of late capitalism. This vital work will be an important text at both undergraduate and graduate levels in gender and women's studies, postmodern studies, and twentieth-century American literature.

Postfeminism in Context studies the representation of women in Australian popular culture over the past three decades to locate postfeminism in a specific time and place. Margaret Henderson and Anthea Taylor argue that 'postfeminism', as a critical term, has been too often deployed in ways that fail to account for historical and cultural specificity. This book analyses Australian popular culture - chick lit novels; 'dramedy' television shows; women's magazines; YouTube beauty vlogs; self-help manuals; and newspapers - to reveal the tensions, contradictions and ambiguities that have always been constitutive of postfeminism, including in Australia. Examining how these popular forms intervene in dominant conversations about contemporary Australian femininities, Postfeminism in Context maps the ways in which various aspects of Australia's history and national identity have shaped its postfeminism. While Henderson and Taylor identify some of the limited postfeminist tropes and patterns of representation evident in comparable locales, they also find that Australian popular culture has responded to feminism in a much more hopeful way. Adding some much-needed cultural specificity to the ongoing debate around this loaded term, Postfeminism in Context is essential reading for those interested in Australian popular culture, feminism, and the gendered politics of representation.

This project is a feminist study of the idiosyncratic oeuvre of Kathy Acker and how her unique art and politics, located at the explosive intersection of punk, postmodernism, and feminism, critiques and exemplifies late twentieth-century capitalism. There is no female or feminist writer like Kathy Acker (and probably no male either). Her body of work-nine novels, novellas, essays, reviews, poetry, and film scripts, published in a period spanning the 1970s to the mid 1990s-is the most developed body of contemporary feminist postmodernist work and of the punk aesthetic in a literary form. Some 20 years after her death, Kathy Acker: Punk Writer gives a detailed and comprehensive analysis of how Acker melds the philosophy and poetics of the European avant-garde with the vernacular and ethos of her punk subculture to voice an idiosyncratic feminist radical politics in literary form: a punk feminism. With its aesthetics of shock, transgression, parody, Debordian detournement, caricature, and montage, her oeuvre reimagines the fin-de-siecle United States as a schlock horror film for her punk girl protagonist: Acker's cipher for herself and other rebellious and nonconformist women. This approach will allow the reader to more fully understand Acker as a writer who inhabits an explosive and creative nexus of contemporary women's writing, punk culture, and punk feminism's reimagining of late capitalism. This vital work will be an important text at both undergraduate and graduate levels in gender and women's studies, postmodern studies, and twentieth-century American literature.

Postfeminism in Context studies the representation of women in Australian popular culture over the past three decades to locate postfeminism in a specific time and place. Margaret Henderson and Anthea Taylor argue that 'postfeminism', as a critical term, has been too often deployed in ways that fail to account for historical and cultural specificity. This book analyses Australian popular culture - chick lit novels; 'dramedy' television shows; women's magazines; YouTube beauty vlogs; self-help manuals; and newspapers - to reveal the tensions, contradictions and ambiguities that have always been constitutive of postfeminism, including in Australia. Examining how these popular forms intervene in dominant conversations about contemporary Australian femininities, Postfeminism in Context maps the ways in which various aspects of Australia's history and national identity have shaped its postfeminism. While Henderson and Taylor identify some of the limited postfeminist tropes and patterns of representation evident in comparable locales, they also find that Australian popular culture has responded to feminism in a much more hopeful way. Adding some much-needed cultural specificity to the ongoing debate around this loaded term, Postfeminism in Context is essential reading for those interested in Australian popular culture, feminism, and the gendered politics of representation.

This collection takes its inspiration from Paul Goodman's Growing Up Absurd, a landmark critique of American culture at the end of the 1950s. Goodman called for a revival of social investment in urban planning, public welfare, workplace democracy, free speech, racial harmony, sexual freedom, popular culture, and education to produce a society that could inspire young people, and an adult society worth joining. In postmodernity, Goodman's enlightenment-era vision of social progress has been judged obsolete. For many postmodern critics, subjectivity is formed and expressed not through social investment, but through consumption; the freedom to consume has replaced political empowerment. But the power to consume is distributed very unevenly, and even for the affluent it never fulfills the desire produced by the advertising industry. The contributors to this volume focus on adverse social conditions that confront young people in postmodernity, such as the relentless pressure to consume, social dis-investment in education, harsh responses to youth crime, and the continuing climate of intolerance that falls heavily on the young. In essays on education, youth crime, counseling, protest movements, fiction, identity-formation and popular culture, the contributors look for moments of resistance to the subsumption of youth culture under the logic of global capitalism.

As a tourist, while you were enjoying your vacation surroundings, have you ever wondered "What would it be like to live here?" What is it like to live in Ouray all year round? I am often asked that by tourists who marvel at their vacation experience and wonder about life in Ouray and this book answers that question. A book of monthly narratives reveals the social fabric develops from the many the environmental, civic, cultural and artistic threads that weave the experience of living in Ouray all year round. This underlying pattern of that tapestry represents the rhythm of Ouray, 365 days of the year as life goes on all year round. If you are an Ouray visitor, either a past or future one, perhaps my writing will give you new insight. Whether you ever visit Ouray or not, perhaps it will give you a dose of curiosity about the places you do visit. And perhaps, through my writing, you will become acquainted with a beautiful, small, mountain town in Colorado. But most of all, I hope that you gain some understanding of the anatomy and lifeblood of small towns and their operations all the days of the year, for their existence is a testament to the creativity and perseverance of the collective human spirit.

This child centred, simple route to reading for pre-school children has been tried and tested with great success over a number of years by the author, a psychology graduate and qualified teacher. The scheme, a distillation of sight reading and the currently favoured synthetic systematic phonics approach, encourages children to learn to read with Sam, a character they will find fun and very easy to identify with. This scheme allows children to create their own first reading book which is followed by a series of fifteen short stories gradually extending most frequently used words to include the 45 key words to reading advised by the National Literacy Strategy. With pictures to colour and space for drawing, there is plenty of scope for children to have fun making this book their own. With no punishing schedules to follow, this all inclusive activity book offers a very flexible approach, ensuring an enjoyable and satisfying reading adventure for both you and your child.

Just now Harriet envies the traffic lights outside Starboard Marine North West. Programmed. Devoid of anxiety, turmoil, indecision. Her life? One big hole! How did she manage to dig three men in so soon? She's fighting to get back to amber. But can she? In the face of serious revelations there's no safe place to be. How did she end up in Venice with Tricia? In serious trouble now. Both of them embroiled. Way out of depth. This story, spiked with humour and the third in the series, tells the next three weeks in Harriet's life. Passionate, painful, tense and intriguing; go with the trail of devastation and fury only Harriet could leave as she tries in desperation to cling to her dreams.

When writing is a first love, where does an author go in between books? For me blogging filled the gap. A chance to depart from the world of fiction to write about the everyday, just where my stories are rooted. I was tempted to stop! I was feeling far too much like Harriet! Inevitable disillusionment for those who know me! Insight to the source of inspiration for those who don't! It's life either side of The Big 40! No delete button! So here it is for posterity. In the nest. Watching the others A fledgling waiting for wings. Dreaming a flight of fancy!'

Fearing repercussions from the Venice affair, Mr. Sanderson insists Harriet and Tricia attend the school camp, only to suspend them from duty after causing mayhem. On her return, Harriet comes up with a great idea to help solve the parents' debt problems but refusing to heed all warnings, she finds herself up against the new pawnbroker and gets more than she bargains for, dragging Tricia in her wake. Still unable to get Mr. Sanderson out of her mind she struggles to stay on amber but to Mark's annoyance, her burning desire for him outstrips her reason. That can only mean one thing. Trouble

Harriet's life is going nowhere! Tired of trying to get her commitophobe partner to marry her, she finds herself falling for her boss, the gorgeous six foot blonde in charge of her school, only to discover she's not the only one! She soon learns he has fingers in other pies and dubious friends in high places. A Question of Answers is a contemporary novel sparking off the conflicts between the differing worlds of the haves and have nots. Live the highs and lows of Harriet's dilemma as she takes you on a passionate yet humorous journey in pursuit of her dreams. .

Harriet. Caught between the steady and the charismatic. Wavering. Two very different men. She's trouble. Can't stay out of it. Still digging away. In serious danger of collapsing the fragile corners of her triangular existence into one big hole. Can Mark really put his fear of marriage behind him? She's only looking for one answer. Unless of course 'that gorgeous hunk of a blonde' in charge of her school gets there first. Him? Unlikely. Different worlds. Too many questions. A weft of answers weave their way through the story. In and out. Criss-crossing the threads of rivalry, jealousy, anger, passion and desire. Ride all Harriet's emotions as she takes you on the rest of her journey. Then ask. 'Was she ever in control of her dreams?' Ne Obliviscaris is the sequel to Margaret's first novel A Question of Answers.