The Private I Privacy in a Public World

These candid, daring, engaging, and decidedly literate writings address the dual question of how we find privacy in this day and age and how we lose it. Comtemporary writers from a wide array from backgroundsamong them Dorothy Allison, Jonathan Franzen, F. Gonzalez-Crussi, Wayne Koestenbaum, Yusek Komunyakaa, Wendy Lesser, Kathleen Norris, and Robin Westtackle the issue of privacy on many levels, including the global, communal, and very personal. Specific essay topics include the implications of surveillance technology; teen web sites and the lives of the girls who create them; the culture of sexual relations in today's prisons; "Privacy in the Films of Lana Turner;" and the polarity of warm, sometimes claustrophobic, Latin communities versus their cold, sometimes isolated, North American counterparts.

Molly Peacock, co-creator of the Poetry in Motion series (appearing in public transportation systems nationwide), is the author of How to Read a Poem and Start a Poetry Circle as well as a memoir, Paradise: Piece by Piece. She has also published collections of her award-winning poetry, which has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. Peacock is a contributing editor for House and Garden.