At the Far End of O Street

“How can we plant speech, so delicate it cannot long survive in air, in the willing field of a blank page and watch it rise like rare vines in the full moon, unfurling in horizontal rows, till it becomes a live garden of sense all bonneted with bees and bloom and blood? How can a stranger then tilt her face toward the page and be burnt by meaning?” ~from At the Far End of O Street)

Carol Haralson is a lifelong book lover, writer, editor, and professional designer. After years of producing warmly acclaimed books for chefs, artists, museums, photographers, national parks, and many others, she has gathered her own “true accounts and little fictions” into an illustrated volume. The text ranges across many forms, from compact fiction and insightful memoir to funny and acutely observed essays to memorable poems (the author was a printmaker and the first winner of the Pablo Neruda Award for Poetry before beginning her career as a book designer). Photomontages created to accompany the book’s text are reproduced in rich color. The author’s expressed intention is to make readers welcome, offer them the freedom to wander, entertain them well, and send them home with an armload of gifts.

Carol Haralson is an acclaimed editor, designer, and producer of books for museums, chef restaurateurs, photographers, artists, and others. An Oklahoma native, she is a tentime winner of the annual Oklahoma Book Award for Design in association with the National Center for the Book. Among generous professional recognition, she is also a tentime winner of the American Association of Museums Award for Excellence in Design and was the inaugural winner of the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. Her second book for Chef Jeff Smedstad’s Elote Cafe in Sedona, Arizona, was selected to represent the United States as one of its two entrants in the international Gourmand cookbook competition for 2018. From 1992 until it ceased publication in 2017 Haralson designed and edited the Gilcrease Journal for the Gilcrease Museum of Art, Tulsa; from 2005 until 2017 she co-edited, designed, and supervised the production of the biannual periodical Sojourns for a consortium supporting public lands. Sojourns was twice honored by the National Association of Partners for Public Lands in conjunction with the National Park Service as an effective interpreter and celebrant of public lands and an exemplar of creative partnering. The conclusion of its run in December 2017 was marked by a book-length publication, Flying Home, edited and designed by Haralson and authored by Craig Childs. Haralson resides in Sedona, Arizona, with her husband, Dr. Edwin Wade, a specialist in Native American art, and two border collies.