Forks by Alix Ohlin
From Signs & Wonders by Alix Ohlin Knopf 2012 Tom and Stephanie come across Alan who is lying on the sidewalk, passed out, his war-torn leg at an odd angle.…
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Year: 2011
Signs and Wonders by Alix Ohlin
I’m running down the street with a beautiful woman, she is everything I think I’ve ever wanted. Pretty but not overly aware of her beauty, but she knows it and takes it for granted.…
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Best of 2011, Part 4: Jason Chambers
The Bee Loud Glade by Steve Himmer – I loved this short novel about Finch, a corporate drone fired from his job creating fake lives in the blogosphere to promote his company’s products.…
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Best of 2011, Part 3: Dennis Haritou
With respect to Johnny’s sleepers concept, I’d rather name my choices after the espressos that I can no longer have. I’ll call them doppios.…
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Best of 2011, part 2: Jason Rice
Men Women & Children by Chad Kultgen: I’ve given this book to so many people it would seem like I’m starting a Chad Kultgen cult.…
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The Sleepers of 2011, part 1 – Jonathan Evison
JE: Very few titles were fortunate enough to receive the marketing budget or the bigtime roll-out that the Tiger’s Wife, The Marriage Plot, The Art of Fielding, Swamplandia, or (ahem) West of Here received in 2011.…
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Vivian Maier: Street Photographer
Are you your job? That’s the way most casual acquaintances judge us: “What do you do?” I’m wondering how Vivian Maier fell into being a nanny.…
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Flatscreen by Adam Wilson
The rumor around town is that debut novels have to have that “what’s next”quality, something to care about, even compelling. I have been stuck on the “compelling” issue of late, probably because a friend read something of mine and said, “there is nothing at risk here, nothing to care about.”…
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The Perfect Gift
Everyday on the way to work, I pass a cove that’s subject to a strong tide. When the cove’s bed is exposed, the sea birds go on a quest for any morsel that might have been left behind by the receding water.…
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420 Characters by Lou Beach
420 Characters Lou Beach HMH $22.00/Higher in Canada (it actually says that on the book) The first thing you notice about this package is just how beautiful it is.…
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Montaigne Reads A Book
I’m blogging Montaigne’s essay On Pedantry, mining it for clues on how to read a book. It’s a pleasure to find a writer finding their footing in an early work.…
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Dispatch from the Story Prize Underdog
In January 2010, I received an email from my newly assigned editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, letting me know that out of 78 story collections, including many by authors I revered and studied (Mary Gaitskill, Antonya Nelson, Aleksander Hemon), Drift had been selected as one of three finalists for the 2009 Story Prize.…
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The Bees by Dan Chaon
From his forthcoming collection Stay Awake, Ballantine – February, 2012. I remember reading Chaon’s collection Among the Missing on the train to and from work.…
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Interview with M. Allen Cunningham
I contacted M. Allen Cunningham after reading his essay about rejection “In the Absence of Yes” in the Nov/Dec issue of Poets & Writers. …
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The Stain by Tessa Hadley
Marina needs a job. She has a toddler son, Liam, and a husband, Gary, who is not doing too well. He works with his brother installing patios and other construction projects.…
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Hemingway on The Chauffeurs of Madrid
If you were a reader of the New York Times on May 23rd 1937, you would have come across a short column on the Spanish Civil War by Ernest Hemingway.…
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Thinking and Feeling: Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men
I’ve been focusing on novels inspired by real life personages. An editor I admire suggested Robert Penn Warren’s 1947 Pulitzer Prize winning All the King’s Men.…
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Interview with Drew Magary
If you missed it yesterday, and you’d like a little context, go back and read JR’s review of The Postmortal. Here’s his chat with Drew Magary: JR: The Postmortal, where did you get the idea to write this novel?…
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The Postmortal by Drew Magary
The Postmortal by Drew Magary Penguin Trade Paper Original It isn’t possible to write a post apocolyptic/dystopian novel these days and not be compared to the landslide of books that inhabit that genre. …
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The Next Right Thing by Dan Barden
Because the elevation rises sharply from the shore of Laguna Beach, in Orange County, California, there aren’t that many roads leading in or out of the affluent community of about 20K people.…
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When We Fell In Love – Tyler McMahon
JE: Having grown up in punk bands in early 80s Seattle, and later being intimately involved in the sound and the scene that would be dubbed grunge in the early 90s, I was excited about six months ago when I received Tyler Mcmahon’s How the Mistakes were Made from St.…
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When We Fell In Love – Joan Leegant
Joan Leegant’s Wherever You Go is making the blog rounds now. It’s the story about Israel, Zionism, extremism, faith and family, and the things people are saying about it are very impressive.…
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Attraction by David Long
One of the most important books in my life turned out to be William Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity. It convinced me that language was essentially ambiguous and therefore multivalent.…
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Monstress by Lysley Tenorio
From Monstress: Stories By Lysley Tenorio The title of this great first story comes from a hack Hollywood filmmaker who has convinced a beautiful girl from Manila to star in his horror picture.…
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