Books by Carol Jenkins

A Crooked Stile takes a slantwise leap over the everyday, a fencer's delight in parry and parody. Starting out from an almost out-of-body consideration of being, Jenkins blithely waltzes around the globe, your better-than-Baedeker witty tour guide. At home, she wades into symbolic systems, taking on water, punctuation. zero, family and mortality before briefly tilting her dunce's cap at the sun, as it sinks into the west.Carol Jenkins lives in Sydney. Her two collections of poetry Fishing in the Devonian (2008) and Xn (2013) were both shortlisted for Premier's Awards. Her illustrated novel, Select Episodes from the Mr Farmhand Series (2013) is a comic tour de force.

"I want you to know, as you sit reading this on your black and starless planet that you should not find that blank blanket of night reason to believe the stars do not exist, the galaxies, the Milky Ways and jewel of Magellan's Clouds, still shine and burn abundant in distant orbits." - from "When Years Take the Stars Away" "Carol Jenkins writes what are probably the best 'scientific' poems in Australia, making the science seem effortlessly familiar and intrinsic to human relationships, including immersion in nature other than human. This is fresh and exciting writing that reveals the interconnectedness of things in ways that others' nature poetry and eco-poetry might seek to emulate. The poems are invested with wit that is the index of a considerate and versatile mind." - Michael Sharkey Carol Jenkins grew up in Woy Woy and left "as soon as possible". At university she studied science, followed by a graduate diploma in Labour Law and a Masters in Public Health. After a career in chemical regulation and assessment she has pursued creative writing since 2003, and in 2007 established River Road press which produces audio CDs of Australian poetry. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and her poem "Shirt/Post Shirt" was commended in the 2007 Newcastle Poetry Prize. She lives in Sydney with her family.

The grandson of slaves, born into poverty in 1892 in the Deep South, A. G. Gaston died more than a century later with a fortune worth well over $130 million and a business empire spanning communications, real estate, and insurance. Gaston was, by any measure, a heroic figure whose wealth and influence bore comparison to J. P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie. Here, for the first time, is the story of the life of this extraordinary pioneer, told by his niece and grandniece, the award-winning television journalist Carol Jenkins and her daughter Elizabeth Gardner Hines.Born at a time when the bitter legacy of slavery and Reconstruction still poisoned the lives of black Americans, Gaston was determined to make a difference for himself and his people. His first job, after serving in the celebrated all-black regiment during World War I, bound him to the near-slavery of an Alabama coal mine—but even here Gaston saw not only hope but opportunity. He launched a business selling lunches to fellow miners, soon established a rudimentary bank—and from then on there was no stopping him. A kind of black Horatio Alger, Gaston let a single, powerful question be his guide: What do our people need now? His success flowed from an uncanny genius for knowing the answer. Combining rich family lore with a deep knowledge of American social and economic history, Carol Jenkins and Elizabeth Hines unfold Gaston's success story against the backdrop of a century of crushing racial hatred and bigotry. Gaston not only survived the hardships of being black during the Depression, he flourished, and by the 1950s he was ruling a Birmingham-based business empire. When the movement for civil rights swept through the South in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Gaston provided critical financial support to many activists.At the time of his death in 1996, A. G. Gaston was one of the wealthiest black men in America, if not the wealthiest. But his legacy extended far beyond the monetary. He was a man who had proved it was possible to overcome staggering odds and make a place for himself as a leader, a captain of industry, and a far-sighted philanthropist. Writing with grace and power, Jenkins and Hines bring their distinguished ancestor fully to life in the pages of this book. Black Titan is the story of a man who created his own future—and in the process, blazed a future for all black businesspeople in America.