The Chick at the Back of the Church

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The Chick at the Back of the Church

By (author): Billie Livingston

Billie Livingston’s poems drive straight for the sharp edges–from the rough, self-assured and brash voice of a woman who poses nude at seventeen while considering the 40-year-old photographer as her guinea pig, to the confidante of relatives and friends grappling with the torturing frustration of love, sexuality, adultery and death.These jagged realities also collide with the innocence of childhood–a toddler being offered LSD by the next-door neighbor, a Catholic schoolgirl being dropped into the frontlines of a fierce abortion protest and a young woman trying to relax with a book in a park but instead facing an unwelcome exposure. Livingston also includes a selection of poems written from the disparate voices of a self-destructive family that eventually developed into her popular novel.

AUTHOR

Billie Livingston

Billie Livingston has published short fiction and poetry in Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and Australia. She is the author of Going Down Swinging (Random House, 2000) and winner of This Magazine‘s 2000 Short Story Contest. Born in Toronto, Billie now lives in Vancouver where she writes, works in the film industry, and collaborates on various projects as a member of The Seven Sisters Writing Group(www.sevensisterswritinggroup.com).

Reviews

Praise for Livingston’s Previous Work:

Going Down Swinging is a moving first book, and Livingston a compelling new voice — one that should be welcomed and watched.
—The Globe and Mail

Livingston succeeds gorgeously in capturing the messiness and unresolvable ambiguities of familial love.
—National Post

This story is intelligent and touching … In prose that reflects her poetic skills … Livingston resists easy sentimentality at every turn.
—The Toronto Star

Tough, unflinching realism … [She] reveals an unflinching eye and a formidable grasp of the mysteries of the human heart.
—The Vancouver Sun