At first, the earth ceased to be the center of the universe; then the evolution of organisms became mutually accepted; and as the human fetus was shown to repeat at certain stages in its development aspects of the life cycles of other species–to possess in fact some of the features of fish and frog–it was denied that human beings could pretend to be different from other living matter. ~Czeslaw Milosz, “Speaking of a Mammal,” from To Begin Where I Am
Monthly Archives: October 2006
looking forward to…
House of Good Hope: A Promise for a Broken City, by Michael Downs, winner of the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize. Forthcoming from University of Nebraska Press, March 2007. Downs is a journalism professor at the University of Montana and the recipient of a 2006 NEA Fellowship. You can read his short story, “At the Beach,” in the Summer 2006 issue of The Missouri Review, and you can read more about the book here. The broken city of the title is Hartford, CT. Jennifer Reed interviewed Downs for the UM School of Journalism online newsletter: “It’s about people from...
Litquake at the Makeout Room
I’ll be reading Sat night, Oct. 14, 8:00, at the Make-Out Room as part of Litquake’s Lit Crawl. Says Violet Blue in her column for SFGate I’d wander on over to see if there’s any action at the The Make-Out Room (21 and over; 3225 22nd St.), where “The Brat Pack: Local Fiction From MacAdam/Cage” — Craig Clevenger, Stephen Elliott, Michelle Richmond and Michelle Tea — may not read about sex (or they might — these people are dirty) but are certainly writers known to put out when the mood strikes.
National Book Award Nominees
And while we’re on the subject of awards, the finalists for the National Book Award were announced yesterday at City Lights. Pleased to see Ben Lerner, a colleague at California College of the Arts, on the poetry list for his book Angle of Yaw. Mark Pritchard at Metroblogging points out that three of the nominees live in Northern California. How’s that for representin’.
Nobel goes to Pamuk
The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish author of Snow, Istanbul, My Name is Red, The Black Book, and other works. He is the first Turkish person to win the Nobel. FYI, the Wikipedia page on Pamuk loads much more quickly than his official site. The Nobel Prize folks have this to say: “in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city {Pamuk} has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures”
The international bestseller about one woman’s search for a missing child…
"Mesmerizing." ~Library Journal, starred review.
Stop dreaming, start writing!
