Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage: The Selected Stories of Bette Howland

Chicago Tribune Notable Book of 2019Kirkus 2019 Best FictionBooklist Best New BookVogue.com Best BookChicago Public Library Best of the Best Books of 2019Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage restores to the literary canon an extraordinarily gifted writer, who was recognized as a major talent, with Guggenheim and MacArthur genius fellowships, before all but disappearing from public view for decades, until nearly the end of her life when her work was rediscovered.Bette Howland herself was an outsider: an intellectual from a working-class neighborhood in Chicago; a divorcée and single mother, to the disapproval of her family; an artist chipped away at by poverty and perfection. Each of these facets plays a central role in her work. Mining her deepest emotions for her art, she chronicles the tensions of her generation-and her native city-with a flair for language in the tradition of Lucia Berlin, Kathleen Collins, and Grace Paley. Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage introduces a new generation of readers to a wry, brilliant observer and a writer of great empathy and sly, joyous humor. With an afterword by Honor Moore.