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"The Traces is a ranging inquiry into the seductions of memory and travel, the fragile paradox of desire, and the art of making meaning from a life. Mairead Small Stead's debut, The Traces is a work of memoir and criticism that explores the nature of happiness in art, literature, and philosophy, structured around a season spent in Italy and a reading of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. Poised between plummeting depressions, the author considers the intellectual merits of joy and the redeeming promise offered by the beauty, both natural and manmade, that surrounds her. Traveling from Florence to Rome to Capri, The Traces draws on the fields of physics, history, architecture, and cartography, spurred by thinkers from Aristotle and Montaigne to Cesare Pavese and Anne Carson"--
About the author
Mairead Small Staid is a graduate of the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan and the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and Phillips Exeter Academy, where she was the Geoge Bennett Fellow. Her essays have appeared in AGNI, The Believer, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Minnesota.
Summary
The Traces is a ranging inquiry into the seductions of memory and travel, the fragile paradox of desire, and the art of making meaning from a life.
The Traces is a work of memoir and criticism that explores the nature of happiness in art, literature, and philosophy, structured around a season spent in Italy and a reading of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities.
Poised between plummeting depressions, the author considers the intellectual merits of joy and the redeeming promise offered by the beauty, both natural and manmade, that surrounds her. Traveling from Florence to Rome to Venice, drawing on the fields of physics, history, architecture, and cartography, and spurred by thinkers from Aristotle and Montaigne to Cesare Pavese and Anne Carson,The Traces is an ecstatic, insightful, and original debut.
Foreword
- Serialization targeting New Yorker, Harper’s, Paris Review, Vanity Fair, n+1
- National review and feature outreach to print publications (NYTBR, New York Times, New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, LA Times, Boston Globe) and online (NPR, Literary Hub, Buzzfeed, The Millions, LARB)
- Promotion at/events pitched for Winter Institute, Brooklyn Book Festival, Portland Book Festival, Miami Book Fair
- Indies Introduce and Indie Next campaigns
- Multiple galley runs; targeted bookseller mailings
- Events: virtual and in-person events with bookstores/venues in Minneapolis, New York, LA, San Francisco, Austin, Dallas, Houston
- Promotion on the publisher’s website (deepvellum.org), Twitter feed (@deepvellum), and Facebook page (/deepvellum); publisher’s e-newsletter to booksellers, reviewers, librarians
Additional text
“A stunning exploration of happiness and memory. These brilliant, beautiful essays challenged and delighted me. A transcendent debut.” —Brit Bennett
“Mairead Small Staid is an exceptionally delightful critic, with a lavish, forceful intellect and a style marked by cross-disciplinary ignition and pointillistic grace. In The Traces, which is the kind of book that'll be passed around like a good secret, she pursues happiness as a magic aberration, a subject as fraught and consequential as its well-trod opposite. Immortalizing one golden season in Florence, she captures the flux of her own personhood and potential—and ours, too—under the influence of time, art, weather, love, and chance.” —Jia Tolentino
