The smallest and most economical member of the Kennedy/ Gioia family, Backpack Literatureis a brief paperback version of the discipline's most popular introduction to literature anthology. Like its bigger, bestselling predecessors, this textbook features the authors' collective poetic voice which brings personal warmth and a human perspective to the discussion of literature, adding to students' interest in the readings.
New features include: thirty-nine stories of well-loved classics as well as accessible contemporary works; more than 237 of the discipline's greatest, most teachable poems; and a wonderful collection of11 high-quality plays.
X J Kennedy has contributed to Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing as an author. X. J. Kennedy was born in Dover, New Jersey, in 1929. After teaching English at the University of Michigan, the Woman's College of the University of North Carolina (now UNC-Greensboro), and Tufts University, he became a full-time writer in 1978. He has published six other collections of poetry, including Nude Descending a Staircase, which won the 1961 Academy of American Poets Lamont Prize; Cross Ties, awarded the 1985 Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Dark Horses, which was published by Johns Hopkins in 1992.