Books
The Long Field
A MEMOIR, WALES, AND THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE
I’m delighted to announce that my book, The Long Field – A Memoir, Wales, and the Presence of Absence, will be published in the United Kingdom by Little Toller Books in September, 2021. Little Toller is the publisher I’d hoped for, so I couldn’t be happier that this hybrid, creative nonfiction-memoir—an eight-year labor of love from conception to finish—has found a home on their list. Check this space for announcements about about launches, readings, signings, and more news about The Long Field!
Sitting Up with the Dead
An enthralling, rollicking tour among the storytellers of the American Deep South.
The second edition of Sitting up with the Dead will be launched by Arcade Publishers in February 2017. The Women’s Review of Books had this to say about “The Dead” when it was first published in 2001 — “Petro has a tart style and a keen eye for detail…The genius of Sitting up with the Dead is the sense of riding shotgun on a road trip with someone smart and funny.”
– Susan Millar Williams, The Women’s Review of Books
The Slow Breath of Stone
An absorbing travel book, a meditation on geology, photography, Romanesque art and the romance of physical decline, The Slow Breath of Stone throws a mirror on Europe of the Middle Ages and its hold on us today.
In the years following the devastations of the first world war, a brilliant, young American couple, Kingsley and Lucy Porter, travelled to south-west Frescapes in Europe, stories chiselled from the Bible and nightmares: rams playing harps and devils eating men’s brains; a female centaur pulling a mermaid’s hair; women suckling snakes at their breasts. For the Porters, these were images…
Travels in an Old Tongue
The idiosyncratic and witty travelogue of a young Welsh-speaking woman who travels the globe in search of Welsh communities. The acclaimed debut of a remarkably witty and engaging travel writer (Bill Bryson meets Jan Morris). At once a fascinating travelogue and an innovative book about the consequences of language.
“A delightful read – a marvelous mixture of wit, nostalgia, character description and atmosphere setting. Anyone who is Welsh, or who has connections with Wales, should read it, as should anyone who isn’t, and hasn’t, but who simply wants to work out what on earth is going on in the minds, hearts and mouths of those for whom Welsh is the language of heaven.”
– Professor David Crystal