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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Month: November 2011
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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