The Life She Wished to Live
W. W. Norton, May 11, 2021
Finalist for the Marfield Prize in Arts Writing
Washington, DC, born and Wisconsin educated, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was an unlikely author of a coming-of-age novel about a poor central Florida child and his pet fawn―much less one that has become synonymous with Florida literature writ large. Rawlings was a tough, passionate, and independent woman who refused the early-twentieth-century conventions of her upbringing. Determined to forge a literary career beyond those limitations, she found her voice in the remote hardscrabble life of Cross Creek, Florida. Between hunting alligator and managing an orange grove, Rawlings employed her sensitive eye, sharp ear for dialogue, and philosophical spirit to bring to life an unknown corner of America in vivid, tender detail―a feat that earned her the Pulitzer Prize in 1938…
Where’s The Moon?
Texas A&M University Press, 2016
When you lose your parents just as you have left home for graduate school—glad to finally be away from a life and place you found stifling—how do you make your way in a world with no home to go back to? For Ann McCutchan, whose parents died in a car accident when she was twenty-three, the answer was to keep moving, away from the dream her mom and dad had so hopefully embraced in her childhood, and away from the locus of that dream, the state of Florida in the 1960s…
River Music: An Atchafalaya Story
Texas A&M University Press, 2011
Louisiana's Atchafalaya River Basin, the heart and soul of Acadiana, or Cajun country, is the focus of this compelling narrative by Ann McCutchan. A masterful weaving of cultural and environmental history, River Music also tells the life story of Louisiana musician, naturalist, and sound documentarian Earl Robicheaux…
Circular Breathing: Meditations From a Musical Life
Sunstone Press, 2011
Circular breathing is a technique for wind instrument playing in which fresh air is drawn in through the nose at the same time that stored air in the lungs is released by mouth through the instrument. The process allows the player to produce a continuous line of music without breaking the curve of a melody to inhale. In this collection of personal essays, clarinetist Ann McCutchan uses the metaphor of circular breathing to animate her understanding of her own life as a woman, musician, and writer…
The Muse That Sings
Oxford University Press, 1999, 2003
The Muse That Sings is a unique behind-the-scenes looks at both twentieth-century music and the nuts and bolts of creative work. Here, twenty-five of America's leading composers -- from Adams to Zorn -- talk candidly about their craft, their motivations, their difficulties, and how they proceed from musical idea to finished composition…
Marcel Moyse: Voice of the Flute
Amadeus Press, 1994
Born just weeks after the completion of the Eiffel Tower and the opening of the great Paris Exposition of 1889, Marcel Moyse would seem destined for a performing career perfectly synchronous with the birth of the modern age, one of the richest artistic periods in France. From his early days as a member of the Ballets Russes orchestra, Moyse went on to play solo flute in Paris's major orchestras, ride the crest of the new chamber music wave, star in the burgeoning recording industry, and rule the flute class of the peerless Paris Conservatoire…