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You Can Read...
...my short-short, "Self-Portrait with Birds," in Pank 5, the latest print issue of Pank Magazine. For the time being, there is also a link to the story online. Pank publishes a print issue and a...
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Recommended Reading
My friend and colleague, Kate Schmitt has a really gorgeous essay in the current issue of Third Coast. No link, but if you're an FAU-er, I pinned it to my office door...
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Living Like a Writer
This fall I had intended to require my graduate students in the fiction workshop keep an artist's journal of some kind (physical, virtual, in words, in pictures...) but I never got around to it. Mostly...
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My Los Angeles in Black & (Almost) White by Andrew Furman
Full Disclosure: You know that sitcom joke about having a work spouse? Well, Andy is my work big brother.I confess when my friends write nonfiction it's hard not to be charmed by these visions of their...
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Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls by Alissa Nutting
This collection of short stories won the Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction, and I love the fearlessness of the author. The world herein is our world but wackier, as if the weirdest of our...
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Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays by Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith is one of the few writers whose writing about writing I find as interesting as her fiction. And in one of the more personal essays in this book, she reveals that her father was the model...
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The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
I've been hearing about this young adult novel for years and meaning to read it for just as long. It's a page turner and well done. And I suspect the things that bugged me about it only bugged me...
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Joe by Larry Brown
Okay, I thought I would blog more given sabbatical...but it turns out, no, I won't. And I waited so long to blog about this novel, which I liked a heck of a lot, that I forgot I had read it until I saw...
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Little Man, What Now? by Hans Fallada
I found this book in my parents' basement--as you might have imagined I grew up in a house where there were, and still are, books at every turn, quite a few of which are more than a hundred years old...
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My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales edited by...
I'm a well known fairy tale fan and so of course I liked this anthology of fairy tales by some of my favorite authors (Aimee Bender, Kelly Link, Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, Lydia Millet...)(full disclosure:...
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Recommended Reading
Check out this essay, by one of my once-upon-a-time students, Megan Kruse, in Narrative magazine (log in required, but it's free).
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Recommended Reading
Sometimes my friends and colleagues exhaust me with their talent, but I celebrate them all the same. Check out the latest translation by Becka Mara McKay (of Alex Epstein's short fiction) in The Kenyon...
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House of Prayer No. 2: A Writer's Journey Home by Mark Richard
When I was in the middle of this memoir I thought, I should only read books this good. Wouldn’t my life be better if I only read books this good? But truthfully, not that many books are this good.Many...
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American Idol and the Art of Storytelling
I'm not sure anyone else is still watching American Idol, but I'm quite enjoying the new judges and whatnot. But my mom and I have decided that what's really needed is an overhaul in the editing...
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A Few Words on First Drafts
I've been moving between two first drafts lately (my least favorite part of writing). And I've realized that a lot of my early drafting is me looking for the rhythm of the story (also the voice, but...
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Eight Questions...
This sure does make me sound a lot smarter than I am. I am seriously appreciative of how thoughtful this reading of my essay is... plus, how did they get the accent on my name right? I don't even know...
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Eight Questions...again
Some very interesting questions raised here. I especially like how one of the labels for the blogpost is lawnmower. By way of one answer, I would probably be a better writer if I were outraged, but no,...
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The Anti-Romantic Child by Priscilla Gilman
Full disclosure: Priscilla's my agent so obviously if I hadn't liked this book I would have pretended--for my whole life--to have not gotten around to reading it. Fortunately I have the good sense to...
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Things That Fall from the Sky by Kevin Brockmeier
I've been thinking lately about how a short story really doesn't need to be a bullet, traveling a fast and straight line (do bullets travel in straight lines? what do I know? not according to this, at...
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The Blog
So, I know, I've been gone awhile. It's not that I haven't been reading. It's just I've had a series of disappointments (Swamplandia! ,Visit From the Goon Squad, some others I won't name). And even...
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The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
Of all the much hyped books of the past year, this novel was by far my favorite (by the way, the author's first name has an accent over the e that I couldn't figure out how to add). It's set in the...
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You Are Free by Danzy Senna
The first story of this collection was my favorite and the one I want to talk about. "Admission" is about a mixed race couple who are deciding whether to enter their child in private school or public...
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Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia
I decided to reread this novel in anticipation of Cristina Garcia's reading at FAU (Oct 20, 5 pm, at University Center for Excellence in Writing) and was delighted by it all over again (I confess I had...
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The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje
There are few novels I like as much as I like Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, and so it seems unfair to hold other novels to its standard, even when those novels are written by Ondaatje...
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Zone One by Colson Whitehead
So a lot was made about literary novelist Colson Whitehead crossing over to genre writing with this zombie novel, and as a result, I had in mind that he'd crossed over to commercial fiction (plot...
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