About the Anthology

Co-edited by Leslie Kerby and Elizabeth Logan Harris, Ferried Away will feature a variety of short texts, ranging from poetry, flash fiction, and memoir to a chorus of community voices that include commentaries by a longtime ferry deckhand, a security guard, an urban farmer, and a beekeeper. Harbor School students recount daily ferry crossings and unique island-based studies. The comical “chicken diaries” relate the inside scoop on the island’s henhouse. Throughout the book, Kerby’s colorful paintings are combined with creative texts that celebrate beloved island sites, such as the former synagogue, the playgrounds, the ubiquitous red chairs, and the ferry. A timeline marking notable dates in the island’s storied past outlines the multi-faceted history of this singular place. A few longer essays will consider the island from different scholarly perspectives. Historian Russell Shorto (Taking Manhattan and The Island at the Center of the World) will write the Introduction. The book is under contract with Empire State Editions/ Fordham University Press.

Co-Editor Leslie Kerby is an interdisciplinary artist based in New York City. She works in a variety of media to thematically interlinked bodies of work. She focuses on issues related to how we lead our lives personally, as individuals. And, to how our personal lives are variably connected to, and changed by, the broader networks and communities within which we live and interact. Her work is in the permanent collections at Columbia University, New York, Arkansas State University, Arkansas, and Copelouzos Family Art Museum, Athens, Greece. Visit Leslie’s website.