Nola: A Memoir of Faith, Art, and Madness

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments I have had so much help writing this book, in ways that are hardly fathomable. First, I want to thank my mother, Elaine Gottlieb Hemley, without whose personal courage and integrity, Nola's story and the story of my family would have been impossible for me to write. I'm also grateful to Beverly Hemley and my daughters, Olivia and Isabel, who gave me a reason for writing this. I'm indebted to Bruce Beasley and Suzanne Paola whose wise counsel, encouragement, and criticism buoyed me. And to Nola, whose words I've rediscovered. I also want to thank Lisa Bullard, Anne Czarniecki, Dale Gottlieb, David Gottlieb, Jennifer Hengen, Fiona McCrae, Mark Sherman, David Shields, Linny Stovall, Kate Trueblood, for their friendship, help, and collective joie de vivre. And grateful acknowledgment is made to the Bureau for Faculty Research at Western Washington University for two summer research grants that helped free my time for writing, and to Elizabeth Fox for helping me with the many pages oftranscripts. Portions of this book were published in slightly different form in Prairie Schooner and Hawaii Review. My story, "Riding the Whip," appeared originally in ACM and Twenty Under Thirty (Scribners), and my mother's story, "The Woman Who Was Absent" appeared originally in the Southern Review. Family photographs, court documents, and journal entries are reprinted by permission ofElaine Gottlieb Hemley. Excerpts from "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities," by Delmore Schwartz. Copyright © I96I by Delmore Schwartz. Reprinted by permission ofNew Directions Publishing Corp. "The Papers of a Poet" by Chad Walsh. Copyright © I967 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission. The illustrations are the work of Nola Hemley. Some names have been changed, but otherwise, everyone is as real as I remember. ...