A Public Space Expands to Books
I of the literary magazine , was browsing the dollar bin at Manhattan’s Housing Works Bookstore Café when she came across , a book written by Bette Howland and published in 1974. Howland’s name didn’t ring a bell, but a glowing blurb from Saul Bellow (“admirably st raight and thoughtful, tough-minded but full of powerful feeling”) graced the book’s back cover. While reading , a memoir about Howland’s stay in a Chicago psychiatric ward after an overdose, Hughes was drawn to the book’s observations,
