DATE=3-21-02

TYPE=BOOK BRIEFS

NUMBER=7-36084

TITLE=WOMEN'S PRESS, ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE HISTORICAL NOVELS, "BLACK COFFEE"

BYLINE=NANCY BEARDSLEY

TELEPHONE=619-1107

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

EDITOR=VICKI SWANEY

CONTENT=

INTRO: On Book Briefs this week, we celebrate National Women's History Month in the United States. VOA's Nancy Beardsley reports on a new U.S. publishing company for women writers, on a series of novels about the famed Eleanor of Aquitaine, and on story about breaking down gender barriers in the U.S. army:

EDGEWORK BOOKS

NARR: A new publishing house has been launched with a double mission. Publishers Weekly reports that EdgeWork Books is aimed at providing readers with quality writing by women authors. Company head Kim Chernin also told the magazine that EdgeWork wants to provide a more experimental, less commercial alternative to the American publishing establishment. The company began publishing last November, with offices in the western cities of Berkeley, California and Boulder, Colorado. The first EdgeWork books include an essay collection on feminism by noted women scholars of color, and a novel called "The Fortune Catcher" about women in the Middle East. The company is also offering online writing classes, individual consultations and other services at its web site www dot edgework dot com.

ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE HISTORICAL NOVELS

NARR: Eleanor of Aquitaine has inspired books, films and legends over the years. Among the more recent authors to fall under her spell is Sharon Kay Penman, who just published

"Time and Chance," the second novel in a trilogy about the life and times of the twelfth century monarch. She says the question shouldn't be why she chose Eleanor of Aquitaine as a subject, but how could she not:

TAPE CUT ONE: PENMAN

"She broke so many boundaries. This woman was queen of France, divorced the French king and then became queen of England. She went on the Crusades with her first husband. Her ship was captured at sea at one point, then she was rescued just in the nick of time. She gave birth to ten children. She launched a civil war against her husband Henry, almost won at one point, and then endured 16 years of confinement, came out of it unbroken and wielded more power behind the throne during the reigns of her sons Richard and John than she probably had enjoyed as consort to either of the kings. And she lived to be 82, so she outlived all her enemies."

NARR: "Time and Chance" takes place during the middle years of the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Her husband King Henry the Second was busy fighting territorial battles with the Welsh and engaging in a power struggle with the English Church. Their once passionate marriage was beginning to disintegrate. While the author has to rely on her imagination to provide color and dramatic detail, she sometimes gets help from historical documents:

TAPE CUT TWO: PENMAN

"We don't know for sure if this letter is genuine, but Eleanor is supposed to have written a letter to the Pope while her son Richard was in captivity demanding that the Pope do what he could to help Richard gain his freedom. And she purportedly signed it 'Eleanor, by the wrath of God, Queen of England.'"

NARR: Sharon Kay Penman is now working on a medieval mystery. She'll then finish her trilogy about Eleanor of Aquitaine.

"BLACK COFFEE"

NARR: Finally, from a time-honored heroine to a new kind of role model. In "Black Coffee," Tracy Price Thompson writes about a smart, ambitious soldier, who's also African American and female. Sergeant Sanderella Coffee is a single mother whose goal is to attend the U.S. Army's prestigious Officer's Candidate School. Tracy Price Thompson is a former U.S. Army officer herself, who decided to write a novel when she retired from the military a few years ago:

TAPE CUT THREE: PRICE-THOMPSON

"I realized that there was nothing in the contemporary African American fiction market that portrayed people of color, in particular women of color, who serve in the military. I think all branches of military service offer unlimited opportunities for minorities today. They earn job training, there's the discipline, the traveling. And I think that's why people of color are flocking in record numbers, because we are succeeding there."

NARR: But Tracy Price Thompson also shows her heroine battling a wide range of obstacles. She has to balance the demands of her career as a soldier with the needs of her child, and struggle to earn the respect of her superiors:

TAPE CUT FOUR: PRICE-THOMPSON

"In terms of gender in the military, women, black or white, or other, tend have to prove themselves, and work much harder than their counterparts just to prove that they're worthy."

NARR: Tracy Price Thompson says she drew on her own experience and that of other women she met while in the army to write her novel.

That's all for Book Briefs. I'm Nancy Beardsley.