JE: High atop my reading list is Larry Watson’s American Boy, just released from the superlative Milkweed Editions. American Boy came highly recommended from my pal Benjamin Percy, who had this to say: “There are a handful of writers I push on everyone I meet, and Larry Watson is one of them.…
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I’m a bit of a star fucker when it comes to writing colonies, and I have to say that this place, the Iowa Writers Workshop, is the wet dream of any wanna-be writer.…
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Anna David is the author of the novels Party Girl and Bought, and the editor of the anthology Reality Matters. Falling for Me, her memoir about following the advice in Helen Gurley Brown’s 1962 book Sex and the Single Girl, releases today.…
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David Long’s story “Oubliette” appears in the current issue of the New Yorker. His prose style is so lucid, so devoid of vernacular cant and style that screams style that’s it’s a pleasure to read.…
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Schulman read over 70 books as a background to distill into Three Weeks in December. There’s a fine selected bibliography at the end of the book.…
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After stumbling on this story I immediately emailed Tom Rachman and demanded to know if this was the start to his next novel.…
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Fall is blockbuster season, but if you’re looking for proof that there’s much more to celebrate in October than eagerly awaited releases by Messrs.…
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I’ve been thinking about how to write fictionally about real events, people, and history. A fellow writer suggested I read Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. …
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From Birds of A Lesser Paradise: Stories by Megan Mayhew Bergman Scribner – March 2012 This story was sent through the dryer on high heat.…
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DH: 1Q84 has an improv quality that I think not all readers will give it credit for. Oh I know, all novels are a riff of words by their authors.…
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From Birds of A Lesser Paradise: Stories by Megan Mayhew Bergman Scribner – March 2012 “When someone’s ideal is the absence of all human life, romance is kind of a joke.”…
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JE: Now that I’ve got a draft of my latest novel behind me, and I’ve promised my agent and editor (a little begrudgingly) to take a rest on blurbing for a season, I’ve finally had a chance to start catching up on my TBR list—that is, my other TBR list, the one composed of books I’m under absolutely no obligation to read as a blurber, blogger, reviewer, or friend.…
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Christopher Bollen and his novel, Lightning People completely skipped over me, I’m not taking it personally. The book is great so far, I’m only 100 pages in.…
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DH: What 1Q84 is ultimately about is what you will be holding in your hands as you read it. It’s a celebration of the craft of storytelling.…
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If you’ve spent any time around The Nervous Breakdown over the years, you’ve probably run into Lenore Zion’s writing. She’s wickedly funny and smart, often scathingly so.…
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From Birds of A Lesser Paradise: Stories by Megan Mayhew Bergman Scribner – March 2012 This story certainly spreads out from where the first two seem to be rooted, and grows casually into a full gallop.There…
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Eric Olsen is the co-author with Glenn Schaeffer of We Wanted to Be Writers: Life, Love, and Literature at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (Skyhorse Pub, 2011), wherein the two alumni of the program offer a rollicking and insightful blend of interviews, commentary, advice, gossip, anecdotes, analyses, history, and asides with more than 20 graduates and teachers at the now legendary Iowa Writers’ Workshop between 1974 and 1978. …
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From Birds of A Lesser Paradise: Stories by Megan Mayhew Bergman Scribner – March 2012 In the second story, we get a doctor who is treating two types of animals at his veterinarian’s office – different sick pets, and his wife. …
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DH: Haruki Murakami has a knack for presenting his characters as regular guys and gals. He’s also a very physical writer, a natural give-and-take athleticism is part of his prose.…
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From Birds of A Lesser Paradise: Stories by Megan Mayhew Bergman – Scribner – March 2012 “At first, it is so quiet my teeth hurt.”…
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I was never interested in Lev Grossman. I resisted reading The Magicians for two years, mostly because it’s described as, “Harry Potter for grownups,” which sounds terrible.…
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Wrapping up reading of The Stranger’s Child by Alan Hollinghurst: As I read towards the last page of Child, which is page 564 in the galley, I found myself racing, anxious for a sense of completion.…
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JC: John Minichillo’s The Snow Whale is another of the great books to come out from Atticus Book this year. He and I were emailing back and forth about him contributing a WWFIL piece and I mentioned that I was thinking about a longish blog post about Moby-Dick and the recent uptick in it’s legacy and influence.…
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Widow: Stories by Michelle Latiolais is a compact collection, intimate and charged. The female protagonists in these eighteen stories are unnamed and vary in ages, and the theme of widowhood is entwined with stories that share a sense of loneliness and loss.…
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