Chris Llewellyn

Here’s a book that has been on my shelf for many years and from time to time I get it out and re-read it.

If you are looking for a book of gifted prose on the working-class you might want to check this one out. Among my favorites in this collection are Reading the New Yorker, Office For The Dead and Scraps.

Llewellyn identifies herself as a ''labor'' poet and Fragments From The Fire received the Walt Whitman Award from The Acadamy of American Poets in 1986. It’s a narrative and harrowing look at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in 1911.

The company manufactured blouses for women and was located on the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of the Asch Building, at the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street, in New York City's Washington Square. During this fire, 146 garment workers, mostly teenage girls, tragically jumped to their death.

The book was gifted by the author… (more)