Barbara J. Taylor was born and raised in Scranton, PA, and teaches English in the Pocono Mountain School District. She has a master’s degree in creative writing from Wilkes University. She still resides in the “Electric City,” two blocks away from where she grew up.Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night is Taylor's first novel.
Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Taylor's reply:
As a writer and an educator, I’m always juggling books. My current pleasure read is Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin, set around the turn of the last century. I read this novel twenty years ago and fell in love with bridges, New York City, and the protagonist, PeterLearn more about Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night, and follow Barbara J. Taylor on Twitter.Lake. I’m about a third of the way through, and so far, it’s as rich an experience as I remembered. In one particular passage, Helprin painstakingly describes the only photo ever taken of Lake’s nemesis, a man named Pearly Soames. It was a mug shot. Five police officers had to hold him down while Pearly screamed, clenched his eyes, and twisted back and forth away from the camera. Just as the picture was taken, a coat rack toppled into the frame. Helprin ends this spectacular paragraph with the line, “Pearly Soames had not desired to be photographed.” I became conscious of the power of understatement the first time I read that page.
--Marshal Zeringue
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