Big thanks to my hometown paper, the Mobile Press Register, for the nod.
Big thanks to my hometown paper, the Mobile Press Register, for the nod.
I just heard the news that John Hughes has died. For those of us who came of age in the eighties, his name means more than the movies. It brings back a whole slew of memories: names of boys and girls we knew, and places they took us, and the things we did and didn’t do. It was Sven Delaney’s mother who drove, I remember that clearly. This was 1984, a hot Saturday in Mobile, Alabama, and Sven and his mother picked me up in a station wagon, one of those long sleek numbers with wood paneling and little...
The Kenyon Review has just published a new anthology of work culled from the magazine over the past seventy years. Editor David Lynn writes: Readings for Writers is a very different creature from your usual anthology…A different principle of selection comes into play: choosing stories, poems, and essays from across the decades to provoke lively responses from writers today, to inspire and challenge…the selections here are intended to inspire active response—pen to paper, fingers to keyboard.” All in all, it looks like a terrific volume for teachers of writing, not to mention anyone who is engaged in the practice...
If you think writers are full of it, this is the event to attend, because rarely does the evening end without at least one writer suffering some form of public humiliation. Tonight, I just hope it’s not me. To read more about the format and the chilling Death Match finale, go here. Tonight’s Literary Death Match is also a launch party for Issue 8 of Opium Magazine. It’s happening at the Elbo Room, 647 Valencia St. Doors open at 6:30, and the show begins at 7:15. Who’s in the face-off: Katharine Noel (Halfway House), Eric Puchner (Music Through the...
The current issue of UK’s Star Magazine features No One You Know, and gives it four (out of five) stars. Gotta love British brevity. The review in its entirety reads: When Lila is violently murdered, her sister Ellie doesn’t know where to turn. Years later, off the beaten track in Nicaragua, she meets the man accused of the murder. Maintaining his innocence, he gives her Lila’s diary, leaving Ellie to unravel the mystery of her sister’s life.