WASHINGTON WRITERS' PUBLISHING HOUSE AND CALVERT LIBRARY, PRINCE FREDERICK, OCTOBER 10

2006 FICTION WINNER
NORA’S ARMY by Denis Collins

Denis Collins will be reading from NORA’S ARMY at Calvert Library, Prince Frederick, at 7 pm, Wednesday October 10, 2007. He may also discuss his jurorship at the recent "Scooter" Libby Trial in Washington’s District Courthouse.
Books will be available for purchase at $15 and for signing

In the spring of 1932 during the worst of the Great Depression, a young Irish woman chases a thief across the Atlantic. She arrives in Washington DC at the same time as the Bonus Army, 35,000 veterans of WWI who have marched on the Capital to press for early payment of their war service bonus.

With little money and nowhere else to live, Nora O’Sullivan moves into the Bonus camp beside the Anacostia River. She participates in the hardscrabble life of the camp, seeks to retrieve a silver cup with peculiar etchings, and falls in love with two 19 year olds – fledgling journalist Eric Sevareid, and Communist organizer Randolph Walker, who lived as a white until the age of 13 when his father discovered Walker’s biological father was black and disowned him.

Early Washington, still surrounded by wilderness, is already a racially and culturally diverse town with blacks, American and Hindu Indians, also speakeasy habitués, opportunists and exotic characters. Fictional characters play out their roles among historical figures By August General Douglas MacArthur disobeys his president and uses tanks and cavalry to drive the Bonus army from the camp, Nora celebrates her 18th birthday, and must choose between Sevareid and Walker.

Denis Collins is a writer and teacher living in Washington DC. He was a journalist with the Washington Post, Miami Herald and San Jose Mercury News. His non-fiction book Spying: The Secret History of History was published last year. His writing has appeared in Smithsonian, FYI Forbes, Men’s Journal and other publications in the US and New Zealand. A graduate of Fordham University, Collins also studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and Talladega College, Alabama. Nora’s Army is his first novel. He teaches creative writing to inner-city children in Washington. Recently he was “the” juror on the Scooter Libby trial.

ISBN 0-931846-82-X 312 pages
Publication Date: December, 2006 Review/advance copies available October 2006

WWPH, a nonprofit cooperative press, published some of the area's best-known poets before adding fiction. Laura Brylawski-Miller painted several covers. Pulitzer Prize winner Henry Taylor notes that “Washington Writers’ Publishing House...is among the most successful recent literary experiments in the country.”

Please send tear sheets to: WWPH, Box 15271, Washington, DC 20003.
To schedule readings, contact: Jean Nordhaus at (202) 543-1905, fax: (202)-543-2519
To contact the author directly: 202 333-6359 DEECER@aol.com
Paperback: 0-931846-82-X
Please make checks or money orders payable to WWPH and send with order form care of: Piotr Gwiazda, WWPH, 1101 St. Paul Street, Apt. 1402. Baltimore, MD 21202; gwiazda@umbc.edu
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