Bøger af Shannon McConnell

Dash Parker dreamed of a World Series ring. Ownership cared about profits and attendance. A new high-priced free agent was brought in for the season. His job? Sell seats. But he was more interested in launching a Hollywood career than rocketing balls over the fence. Griffin Roberts only agreed to come to LA to find a Hollywood agent and figured he'd be starring in a blockbuster action drama by the time the World Series started in October. Ownership didn't care about Griffin's motivation. Television contracts and corporate sponsors were paramount to winning titles. Manager Dash Parker understood, but couldn't agree. Call him old fashioned, but Joseph Dashiell Parker believed that winning a title would translate to the financial benefits ownership desired. And you didn't win championships with high-priced, disengaged talent. By early June, the team built on one under achieving superstar was mired in the cellar. That's when Dash started dreaming. As the calendar turned and the All Star break loomed, the team began mysteriously punching victories into the win column. Nothing had changed on the roster. However, in the midnight hours of those early summer nights, Dash experienced vivid dreams of another team. Only this team didn't play in the shadows of the Boys in Blue. This "dream team" played their hearts out in pre-war America. These post-depression boys helped Dash focus on the task at hand, managing a team to the championship. As the end of the season approached, Dash had two championships to play for: one in the bigs, and one in the old time PCL. The trouble was, Dash wasn't entirely sure which one was the real team.

"In her debut poetry collection, Shannon McConnell explores the fraught history of New Westminsters Woodlands School, a former 'lunatic asylum' opened in 1878 which later became a custodial training school for children with disabilities before its closure in 1996. Partially set in the 1960s and 70s, The Burden of Gravity uses personas to imagine residents lives, giving voice to those who were unable to speak for themselves, to shift focus from the institutional authority to the experience of residents. As poetry of witness, the collection uses a grounding tone to excavate the individual experiences through traditional narrative, ekphrastic and experimental erasure forms that elicit an array of emotions, from heartbreak to anger. Drawn from archival research, The Burden of Gravity, challenges readers to consider how we, in the aftermath of deinstitutionalization, choose to remember institutions like Woodlands School."--