from hearths in Kentucky (or Mississippi) where single women endure and prevail. F. Scott Fitzgerald wasn’t entirely accurate when he famously said, ‘There are no second acts in American lives.’ Aleda Shirley has disproved him with her brilliant second book.” Works Chinese Architecture, 1986 Long Distance, 1996 Dark Familiar, 2006 References 1955 births 2008 deaths American women poets 20th-century American poets 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women