The new issue of Failbetter is up, featuring an interview with Ann Tyler, short fiction by Benjamin Krier and Kevin Sampsell (it is my humble duty to promote all Kevins, as I married one), and art by Shawn McNulty. Plus they sell this great bib for $6.99.
Sorry I’ve been amiss in posting the last few days. My publication date for Ocean Beach has been moved up to January, 2007, so I’m on a super-tight deadline now. Burning the midnight oil, but yes, it’s true, I’m thinking of all of you. I’ll be back in business next week. Meanwhile, check out this [...]
Natalie R. Collins, author of Wives and Sisters, stops by today with her literary soundtrack:
1) The soundtrack to your latest book (what did you listen to while you were writing it?)
Paula Cole, This Fire. She’s one of my faves.
2) one song title (from any album) that would make a great book title (either for [...]
Mark your calendar to see Peter Orner, author of the wonderful story collection Esther Stories, read from his new novel, The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo.
Monday, May 8, Clean Well Lighted Place for Books on Van Ness. 7:00
Reception with some food at 6:15.
What then shall I do this morning? How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. ~Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
Of course it is a rather stupid thing to spend one’s morning reading a book about [...]
“I have tried to disregard as much as possible the history of literature. When my students asked me for a bibilography, I told them, ‘A bibliography is unimportant–after all, Shakespeare knew nothing of Shakespearean criticism. Why not study the text directly? If you like the book, fine; if you don’t, don’t read it. The idea [...]
Women authors in general are often criticized for working in the realm of the so-called “domestic novel,” as if the arena of home and love is not big enough a subject, as if there is something intellectually lacking in narratives of human relationships. There is still a prejudice among publishers (i.e. marketing departments) and review [...]
Muriel Spark has died at the age of 88 in Tuscany. Her most famous novels are The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Girls of Slender Means.
“The Girls of Slender Means,” considered by many to be her best novel, was published in 1963, drawing on her experience as a young woman struggling to make [...]
A photographer from Family Circle is coming over to my house in a couple of weeks to do a photo shoot for a piece that my friend Meredith Maran wrote. Okay, this is the only publication I’ve been in that, like, all the chicks who were mean to me in high school probably subscribe to. [...]
I have read almost all of Croce, and though I am not always in agreement with him, I am enchanted by him. Enchantment, as Stevenson said, is one of the special qualities a writer must have. Without enchantment, the rest is useless.
~from “The Divine Comedy,” the first lecture in Seven Nights
I love what Borges says [...]
