Stories of a Woman's Life

Stories of a Woman's Life is a collection of stories, short prose pieces, and poems that covers a woman's experience. It is sharp, soft, contained, and disciplined. It considers everything in a woman's life, always changing gear, always reflecting on what it means to be a woman, and what a woman means to herself. Stories include "Gabriella Is Inside Me," about a Colombian jazz pianist, "To Be a Transgender Woman," about a transgender woman DJ at a fashionable club, and "Mistress to a Black Ghost," which is a mysterious story about a lonely woman escaping a phantom in her past. Marshall is as adept a fiction writer as she is a poet, and these stories illustrate this vividly. Sophia Marshall is a perceptual poet, characterized by her treatment of the senses. She has been compared to e.e. cummings, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Emily Dickinson, and Sappho. She is a credentialed journalist and music critic, as well as a poet, with credits in several jazz journals and other music publications, and she has published letters on politics in The Boston Phoenix. She has a blog, The Flash Boston (theflashboston.com), covering Boston music and culture. She is a transgender woman. She lives in Boston.