Explore Library
Welcome to the world’s largest collection of pre-posthumous works by Amanda McTigue
Visitors Center
Coming Soon
READING ROOMS
STUDY CARRELS
LISTENING BOOTHS
GALLERIES
SCREENS
Places where you’ll be able to explore
MY DEBUT NOVEL
I’m happy to say this little book was named a Best Read of 2012 by public radio KRCB’s “Word by Word.” It’s been a while, but I’m fond of it. These days it’s out of print though still findable in hardcover or paperback on various platforms and used book collections. The e-book is widely available. A new second edition is due in 2027. It’s set in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Strangers converge (a theme of mine) at a hospice called Solace. They’re kitchen-table heroes, “ordinary” people who find themselves having to take care of (or fail to take care of) people they either love or hate. As one reader said, Going to Solace “brings comfort to comfortless times.”
CAUTIONARY TALES
Coming soon. It’s not really a novel. I call it a StoriesBook. The Cautionary Tales retells Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in a parallel here-and-now. A handful of eco-pilgrims find themselves stuck in a foreign city due to a global travel ban. Unable to travel, they “Travel” by telling each other tales. Stand-alone stories come to us wrapped inside a single love story. All of it driven by a question I cannot shake: if stories are their endings and ours is dire, then what do they mean and how do we love?
SHORT STORIES
“The Alpine Mall” is one of the stand-alone stories in The Cautionary Tales. Typehouse Literary Magazine was good enough to publish it in 2016 and nominate it for a Pushcart Prize (scroll to page 33 in the .pdf) It will also be available in one of my library’s study carrels where you’ll be able to read an illustrated version, listen to it, or do a deeper dive via interactive scrollytelling. Don’t know what that is? Here’s an example from the New York Times.
SONGS
I’ve written the lyrics for all kinds of songs. Here’s mezzo Bonnie Brooks singing a jazz standard, “Cat Eyes.” More music and songs to follow in the Listening Booth.
LULLABIES
We recorded a concept album of art songs disguised as lullabies with soprano Jenni Samuelson. Here’s a video of one of the songs. I’ll offer more in this library on screens or through your earphones.
MOVING PIX
There’ll be short videos, some tied to my books and stories, others not. Like this one. Remember Covid? In 2020, cooped up in my house, I took a chance on an online class with a group I knew nothing about but now adore: Pig Iron Theatre. We looked at performance art on film via the new magic of Zoom, studying the works of Maya Deren and David Hammons. Weekly assignments challenged us to make videos with whatever we had lying around since the world was in lockdown. For this first one, Carly told us to think about time. I can date it exactly–so can you. You’ll hear snippets in the background of live news broadcasts reporting that our president, the one with the orange hair who recommended drinking bleach as a preventative, had tested positive for Covid. That was Oct 2, 2020, recorded in fragments here for posterity.