Sadi ranson
Encyclopedia
Early career
Ranson-Polizzotti first became known for her premier novel, Eels, which was published by Alyscamps Press in Paris on September 5, 1997. Eels was compared to the novel by Elizabeth SmartElizabeth Smart (author)
Elizabeth Smart was a Canadian poet and novelist. Her book, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, detailed her romance with the poet George Barker...
, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept and, among others, Sylvia Plath's
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...
The Bell Jar
The Bell Jar
The Bell Jar is American writer and poet Sylvia Plath's only novel, which was originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963. The novel is semi-autobiographical with the names of places and people changed...
. The novella, Eels, was well received and well-reviewed by The Review of Contemporary Fiction, as well as the (then print-only) edition of The Boston Book Review in October, 1996 and in the Fall issue of The Harvard Review. At the time of publication, Ranson had already left David R. Godine Publisher to found her own imprint, Lumen Editions.
Lumen Editions & Publications
Ranson-Polizzotti was founder and Editorial Director of the literary press Lumen Editions, an imprint of Brookline Books, which was known for publishing work in translation, and shedding a light where none had been shed before. The board of Lumen Editions included, among others, notable individuals in the publishing world, Nobel Prize Winner Saul BellowSaul Bellow
Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
, author Tom Pohrt, artist Rosamund Purcell, New York publisher Ned Chase (father of Chevy Chase), and other notable figures in the publishing industry.
Lumen Editions quickly established itself as one of the best independent publishers in the field and received a great deal of media attention both for its high-profile Editorial Board as well as the fine quality of work in translation. It soon became one of the most watched publishers in its class.
Under Ranson-Polizzotti's direction, Lumen Editions published many great authors including the work of Prix Goncourt winner Jean Echenoz
Jean Echenoz
Jean Echenoz is a French writer.Son of a psychiatrist, Echenoz studied in Rodez, Digne-les-Bains, Lyon, Aix-en-Provence, Marseille and Paris, where he lives since 1970. He published his first book, Le méridien de Greenwich in 1979...
, Harry Mathews
Harry Mathews
Harry Mathews is an American author of various novels, volumes of poetry and short fiction, and essays.-Life:Born in New York City to an upper class family, Mathews was educated at private schools there and at the Groton School in Massachusetts before enrolling at Princeton University in 1947...
, Hans Koning
Hans Koning
Hans Koning , author of over 40 fiction and non-fiction books, was also a prolific journalist, contributing for almost 60 years to many periodicals including The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, Harper's, The New Yorker, and De Groene Amsterdammer.-...
, Florence Delay
Florence Delay
Florence Delay is a French academician and actress.-Biography:The daughter of Marie-Madeleine Carrez and Jean Delay, Delay studied at the Lycée Jean de La Fontaine and then the Sorbonne....
, Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Donnadieu, better known as Marguerite Duras was a French writer and film director.-Background:...
, and others. The publishing house received a great deal of attention in both trade and non-trade magazines such as Publisher's Weekly, Independent Publisher, and the books are notable for receiving a New York Times review (per book) as well as garnering attention and numerous reviews from other major national media.
Ranson has been profiled by various magazines for her work at Lumen and was most recently profiled for the famous Cleveland Blogcritics
Blogcritics
Blogcritics is a blog network and online magazine of news and opinion. The site—a self-proclaimed "sinister cabal of superior writers"—was founded in 2002 by Eric Olsen and Phillip Winn...
, an online newspaper and magazine that won Best of Forbes in its class. Due to the work Ranson was doing at Lumen and that paperback translations had previously not garnered much attention where Lumen succeeded, Independent Publisher named Ranson the enfant terrible of the publishing world.
One of the most important books that Lumen Editions and Ranson published was the final book written by French author Marguerite Duras. The book's title was Writing (in French, Ecrire), was translated by Mark Polizzotti (author of Revolution of the Mind, the biography of French Surrealist André Breton
André Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
, and a well-known French translator). Duras is best-known for her book The Lover as well as her screenplay Hiroshima, Mon Amour, among many other books that Duras published both in French and that have now been translated into English.
Ranson writes for many online and print publications that publish her poetry as well as work about Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
, Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
, Henry Miller
Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...
for the international journal Nexus), Contariwise, Teleread, and generational and cultural issues as well as a popular music column for Best of Forbes magazine, Blogcritics.
Background sketch
Ranson had previously worked in publishing since the age of fifteen and was one of the youngest "Rovers" or interns ever hired by the large magazine publishing house of Conde-Nast (where she worked in the New York city office), which publishes many of the top magazines worldwide. Ranson worked at Vogue.After being born and raised in Great Britain, Ranson attended University and interned in the United States. At present, she is an established poet and writer (in many areas, including technology), as well as professor (at the graduate level where she teaches Book Editing and Publishing to graduate students). She also guest lectures on various topics at a number of universities and has participated in she has also done public radio programs on the state of translation public radio programs. She has lectured at Harvard University's Bunting Institute for publishing, and frequently lectures on pop culture and Bob Dylan, about whom she runs a successful web site. Ranson-Polizzotti lectures at The New School and New York University, both in New York City.
Vogue - Authors Worked With
Vogue, Elle, House & Garden (at the time), Gentlemen's Quarterly, Vanity Fair and other publications owned by Conde Nast were soon published under the leadership of Steven T. Florio who became CEO of Advance Publications, which also published The New Yorker.After working at Conde Nast Publications
Condé Nast Publications
Condé Nast, a division of Advance Publications, is a magazine publisher. In the U.S., it produces 18 consumer magazines, including Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, as well as four business-to-business publications, 27 websites, and more than 50 apps...
, Ranson attended Boston University, returning to Conde Nast for several summers to work as a fashion assistant at Vogue
Vogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
magazine where she worked for Jade Hobson and Anna Wintour
Anna Wintour
Anna Wintour, OBE is the British-born editor-in-chief of American Vogue, a position she has held since 1988. With her trademark pageboy bob haircut and sunglasses, Wintour has become an institution throughout the fashion world, widely praised for her eye for fashion trends and her support for...
as well as other editors under the direction of then editor Grace Mirabella
Grace Mirabella
Grace Mirabella is a former editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine. She started working at Vogue in the 1950s and served as editor in chief between 1971 and 1988.-Biography:...
. Note that this is the same program that employed Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...
at one time and which provides the backdrop of her famous book the The Bell Jar
The Bell Jar
The Bell Jar is American writer and poet Sylvia Plath's only novel, which was originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963. The novel is semi-autobiographical with the names of places and people changed...
.
After graduating with a Bachelor of Science from Boston University, Ranson worked at The Atlantic Monthly as a literary associate where she evaluated incoming manuscripts for Staff and Fiction Editor C. Michael Curtis as well as Poetry Editor Peter Davison, before she was hired by the well-known independent literary publishing house of David R. Godine, Publisher.
Lewis Carroll - Bob Dylan - Editorships
Ranson has well-established herself in the world of trade publishing as an editor and is also well-established as a poet as well as a writer of both fiction and non-fiction. Ranson has written widely about author Lewis CarrollLewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
, among many subjects and topics. Ranson-Polizzotti is now under contract with Continuum Books and is writing a full-length manuscript about Carroll as part of a series of great authors. Her articles about Lewis Carroll have been widely published and anthologized. Ranson-Polizzotti is also a member of the Society for New Lewis Carroll Studies, Contrariwise with other Carroll scholars who work and write to bring a new, contemporary and they argue more accurate understanding to the biography of Lewis Carroll. Of note is Ranson's documented contention that Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) had epilepsy, which she has documented in articles and is forthcoming in her book on Carroll.
In autumn 2009, Publisher's Weekly was the first industry publication to announce that Ranson would again launch her own imprint, much like Lumen, this called Fibonacci Editions http://www.fibonaccieditions.com/, an imprint for literary trade books which Ranson formed under the aegis of the U.S.-based publisher, Twilight Times Books, publisher Lida Quillin. The announcement that Ranson would again be working as head-of-house and acquisitions editor was a feature story in the October 26th, 2009 edition of [Publishers Weekly].
Ranson-Polizzotti was named a senior editor and analyst to the political and literary journal Cyrano, edited by Patrice Greanville, Editor Emeritus Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
and Editors Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
among others in the field. Ranson-Polizzotti has been named as a Senior Cultural & Political Analyst.
Ranson-Polizzotti has just completed a biography of Lewis Carroll and is presently working on a novel entitled, "Unnaturally Close". She is also working on a book of personal essays about singer/songwriter and Pulitzer Prize winner Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
.
She has written a great deal about Temporal Lobe Epilepsy
Temporal lobe epilepsy
Temporal lobe epilepsy a.k.a. Psychomotor epilepsy, is a form of focal epilepsy, a chronic neurological condition characterized by recurrent seizures. Over 40 types of epilepsies are known. They fall into two main categories: partial-onset epilepsies and generalized-onset epilepsies...
for major health sites as well as more general news sites and again, on Wikipedia.
Ranson-Polizzotti has published widely in the IT field for her technical writings and podcasts for various organizations including Teleread, editor David Rothman.
Tant Mieux is an officially endorsed and is one few Bob Dylan sites that are selected from the many sites worldwide to be featured on Bobdylan.com, which is endorsed and run and owned by Sony BMG. Ranson's articles which are often featured read more like philosophy than criticism or interpretation. While Ranson will write music criticism and commentary and writes a successful column for Blogcritics (The List Of The Moment), she does not attempt to interpret Dylan's work but rather uses him as a way to express and convey her own thoughts. It may be this very thing that differentiates Ranson's work from that of others: Tant Mieux offers a more philosophical approach to Dylan's work. Tant Mieux does accept contributions. Recently several articles (on Twyla Tharp and Dylan's exhibit at The Morgan Library and Museum) by site contributor Evander Lomke, Avner Ohev, Oliver Trager, and others. Tant Mieux has one of the most extensive collection of images of Bob Dylan available as an archive.
Original poetry and essays about poetry
Ranson-Polizzotti writes poetry on her personal website on a regular basis. Most are confessional in nature (similar to poets she admires). Usually first person, sensual and involving a lot of recurring themes. Many are about her life overseas in France. Many are accompanied by photos (sometimes of herself). Her articles cover a variety of subjects, including cultural comment, GenX issues, review, literature, and music.Ranson's work has been published in journals both in the United States and abroad and has been well-received and reviewed by many journals such as The Dalkey Archive Press (publisher) which reviewed Ranson's first book, Eels. Ranson-Polizzotti has a new book of collected and select poems forthcoming this summer from her French publisher, Alyscamps Press, who initially published Ranson's first novel in a limited, signed and numbered collector's edition. These editions, considered rare, now sell for over eighty dollars if authenticated.
Books & Notable Works
- Eels, Alsycamps Press, Paris, ISBN 1-897722-89-3
- The American Directory of Writer's Guidelines, 3rd Edition: A Compilation of Information for Freelancers from More Than 1,400 Magazine Editors and Book Publishers (Paperback), Quill Driver Books, 3rd Edition, January 2003
- What About Lewis Carroll Biography & Source Studies, editor Fred Carl
- First Book Market, editor Jason Shinder, "Faith and Fiction" by Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti, Macmillan, Book of the Month Club selection.
ISBN 1-884956-19-X,
- Biography & Source Studies; an anthology editor Fred Carl, "What about Lewis Carroll" by Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti, editor Fred Carl
External links
Ranson-Polizotti runs several personal websites and projects, contributes poetry to dozens of literary magazines, and has (as of November 2006) published over 275 articles/essays on American culture for blogcritics. (Here is a partial list).- Ourmedia Includes spoken word audio and poetry set to music with music by David Beaman.
- "The Padded Bed" on Cyrano's Best by Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti