Karen Lillis, top Pittsburgh literary maven and Polish Hill denizen, has a new work that has just been released as part of the Spuyten Duyvil Novella Series.  Watch the Doors As They Close is an engaging 80 page work that appears, at first glance, to be a breezy roman á clef recalling a failed relationship.  A closer read, however, reveals it to be primarily taken up with an intriguing meditation on this popular literary form.  Adopting the guise of a series of journal entries, it is presented as having been written in quick succession during the closing three weeks of 2003.  Lillis employs the technique of "stating the obvious" to bait the reader into digging a little deeper; evident right from the get go, with its opening sentence, "This is the story of Anselm."  This seemingly blatant statement of fact is revealed, by the close of the work, to be anything but.  Not simply a portrait of "Anselm", Watch the Doors is more complexly the story of the nameless "I", the narrator, and how Anselm has been encoded in her psyche.  Geography – from Pittsburgh to Paris but mostly Brooklyn – and history – primarily 9/11 – are intermittently intagliated throughout the narrative but fail to penetrate its driving dynamic and engage its actors, who effectively live in their own world, which is a creation of the narrator.  Watch the Doors explores the psychology and motivations at work behind the desire to write about friends and lovers under the guise of fiction.  Attentive readers will glean their own personal insights from these explorations and be wiser for their efforts.

20 Pittsburgh postcards in a limited edition box

This gift-ready box set contains 20 Pittsburgh postcards, with 20 different images all photographed right here in Pittsburgh, PA by a Pittsburgh-based artist. (plus the cover images!) The postcards are high quality, two sided, full color postcards. Each card has a brief description on the reverse, plus appropriate markings for mailing and space for writing.

The sturdy white box is decorated with a photo-printed sticker and bound by a photo-printed belly band.  This box set was created as a numbered, limited edition of 75 only (and we only have a small fraction of those).

Have a Made-in-Pittsburgh Christmas!

Check out Karen's piece in The Belt which incorporates a number of images from this box set.

ONE LEFT!

Karen Lillis is back with more Pittsburgh photos!  This square-format, saddle-stitched, 60-page, full color book is packed with (mostly) full-page photographs of classic, old school Pittsburgh eateries, sharply printed on glossy white stock. Many of these photos, mostly of interiors, are so inviting that they make you want to put the book down and head out to grab a bite at one or more (or all!) of them.  Luckily there is an index at the back of the book, identiying each of the spots. 

Needless to say, a great gift item for Pittsburghers past, present and future.

(And, just FYI, we still have a couple copies left of her limited edition box set from last year, Sense of Place: Pittsburgh.)