Woman in the Tower
Woman in the Tower: Stories for the Wounded Child Media Kit
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Woman in the Tower: Stories for the Wounded Child is a novel of fables told to a man in the throes of a life crisis. In a series of increasingly strange and challenging encounters he explores the mysteries of his own soul and that of the world and all its inhabitants. The arc of these tales not only displays a way into the recesses of the human psyche, but also explores the nature of fables, revealing them to be more than simple lessons for naive children in a dangerous world. They are scripts for how we live our interior and exterior lives and a lens through which we view the lives of others. We each have a tale we tell ourselves. Are you a princess or a scullery maid, the lost little girl or the enchanted queen? Are you willing to tell yourself another story? Are you willing to enter the world of the Woman in the Tower? Author Richard Lance Williams was inspired by Pacifica Graduate Institute classes on Folklore & Fairy Tales and Mythopoetic Expression as well as the movie The Saragasso Manuscript, a 1970s Polish ghost movie.
About the Author: Award-winning poet Richard Lance Williams began acting and writing early and has been interested in the slippery nature of consciousness ever since. He received his master’s degree in mythology with an emphasis in depth psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in 1998. He has edited the “Litera” listings of The Austin Chronicle since 1988, and he wrote the “Poet’s Beat” column for The Austin Light from 1987-1991, edited for Ed Buffalo’s poetry anthologies Aileron and Vowel Movement in the late 80s and early 90s, and was the associate editor from 1997-1999 for Alchemy on Sunday, the literary journal of Pacifica Graduate Institute.
Williams’ critically acclaimed book of poetry the secret book of god won Best Book of Poetry in the 2007 Poetic Diversity awards. Woman in the Tower is his premiere novel.
Advance Praise for Woman in the Tower:
“All we know comes from the stories we tell and the stories we are wise enough to hear. Ric Williams uses narrative as the most subtle of knives where a wise heart can peal away its own onion layers and moonlight words can stitch them up again. This novel is about Story herself, healing, erotic, sustaining.”
-Don Webb, author of When They Came
“Richard Lance Williams has written a story sequence which bows to Grimm tales without imitating them. They have the same breadth of the Grimm’s great ‘household’ collection-from the domestic to the fantastic-and are crammed with the best kind of Jungian imagery. This book looks at interiors as subtly as it examines exteriors. Mr. Williams’ prose has all the sparkle of a fine fairy tale and he has a sharp, original imagination.”
-Michael Moorcock, Nebula Award-Winning author of Behold the Man
“Having the courage to choose a story over certainty becomes easier after reading Woman in the Tower. Stories are gestures to lift the veil of the apparent world so we might see the unadorned reality beneath it. With a prose style both punchy and profound, Williams is a master at lifting the veil.”
-Dennis Patrick Slattery, author of The Wounded Body and Grace in the Desert
“ASKESIS: the ability to combine experiences of natural living with a consistent discovery of meaning…Ric Williams is a skillful storyteller, Woman in the Tower a stunning achievement!”
-Stephanie Pope, cultural mythologer: mythopoetry.com
“This debut novel from accomplished poet Ric Williams channels his familiar voice-oracular, effusive and playful as a fresh spring that’s come a long way underground-into new territory that I’d be tempted to call uncharted regions of the psyche, except that Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell got there first. Still, surveying from the mountaintop is one thing and cutting new narrative paths through ancient forest is another. Ric dives into the darkness fearlessly, a shaman on a busman’s holiday, and it’s both a pleasure and an adventure to go along for the ride.”
-Zara Houshmand, author of A Mirror Garden
“Richard Lance Williams weaves mythological fables within realistic stories, stitching lessons in consciousness from a compelling series of unconscious images in this multi-layered novel. Is all this happening or is the narrator dreaming? It matters not since the telling is fascinating and the prose is both philosophically complex and poetically felicitous.
Who is the Woman in the Tower: Dream, hallucination, ghost? Rather, I see her as his Muse and read this intoxicating text as a subtle hymn to the creative process and as a brilliant tour-de-force of poetic language.”
-Robert Bonazzi, author of Maestro of Solitude: Poems & Poetics and Man in the Mirror: John Howard Griffin and the Story of Black Like Me.
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