Monthly Archive:: January 2012

An Interview with Hala Salah Eldin Hussein

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
I’m delighted to devote this week’s blog post to someone who is taking a bold stand for literature. Three years ago, my agent forwarded me an e-mail from an editor/translator in Cairo. Hala Salah Eldin Hussein was interested in publishing some of my work in Arabic translation in her

Blurbese: “Haunting”

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
In his new regular column, our blog book reviews editor Andrew Ladd looks at “blurbese,” the contemporary language of book reviews, and names its most egregious offenders. What is it about book critics and the heebie-jeebies? Show most reviewers a pulpy horror story and they’ll turn up their noses

Which a Minute Will Reverse

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. — “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”   I didn’t do a lot of revision before beginning my MFA. This isn’t because I didn’t see the value

An Interview with Emerging Writer’s Contest Winner Thomas Lee

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
Thomas Lee is the first winner of our Emerging Writer’s Contest. His story, “The Gospel of Blackbird,” appears in the current Alice Hoffman issue, and he is also one of our new guest bloggers. We sat down and spoke with him several months ago about balancing work and writing,

Come In and Cover Me

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
Come In and Cover Me Gin Phillips Riverhead Books, January 2012 342 pages $26.95 “What did people do when they abandoned their center? Did they create a new thing altogether, or did they cling to old habits?” Silas Cooper, an archaeologist in Gin Phillips’s second novel, Come In and

Many Forms of Rejection

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
Rejection is a part of writing. Many years ago, a great writer who has published several books (who shall remain nameless) told me that she still gets rejected by journals more often than she gets published. This gave me hope as a writer. Rejections from journals didn’t necessarily mean

Unrequited Love Letters

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
A few weeks ago, my nine-year-old daughter handed me the first love note she’d ever received. It was a white paper napkin tied with a bit of shiny blue ribbon. Below the ribbon were pink magic-marker dots and a green number 1. A boy had slipped it into the

CEpOet

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
When you’re drinking Rolling Rock with a bunch of poets after a sparsely attended reading in a far-flung corner of Brooklyn, it’s hard to keep in mind that writing isn’t just an art—it’s a business. Especially in poetry, it’s easy to become enamored of the bohemian aspect of the

Noir

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
Noir Robert Coover Overlook/Duckworth Books, November 2011 192 pages $14.00 This post was written by Lynne Weiss. It’s a perfect night. Wind, rain, gloomily overcast, the puddled reflections more luminous than the street lamps they reflect. You’re Philip M. Noir, and you’re looking for a story—or maybe you’re trying

Another Lawyer-Writer

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
Yes, I am a lawyer.  There are so many lawyer-writers, it’s cliche at this point.  Off the top of my head, there’s John Grisham, Scott Turow, Stephen Carter, Brad Meltzer, Amy Chua, Elizabeth Wurtzel, Min Jin Lee…and the list goes on and on.  In every genre and in every