Uncategorized Archive
THAT LIT, LIT LIFE (with global characteristics) 2 (of 14)
32 years. That’s how long it’s been since I last set foot on Australia’s east coast. Byron Bay was a soft landing after the long absence, because here was a surfer’s paradise, a gourmet’s paradise, a wine aficionado’s paradise . . . okay, okay so waxing overly lyrical etc.,
Literary Boroughs #14: Montpelier, Vermont
The Literary Boroughs series will explore little-known and well-known literary communities across the country and world and show that while literary culture can exist online without regard to geographic location, it also continues to thrive locally. Posts are by no means exhaustive and we encourage our readers to contribute in the comment section. The
A Machine that Twitters: Why I decided to let Paul Klee title my essays
For about four years, I lived within walking distance of the Menil Museum in Houston. It’s a free museum lodged in the Montrose neighborhood and it ate hours of my life. One season the museum had a giant mounting of Paul Klee’s work, the majority borrowed from other collections.
The Borderlands of Language: Using Italics for “Foreign” Words (Part I)
Junot Díaz once told me that he writes for his six best friends and the rest of the world. This was a few summers ago in a VONA fiction workshop in San Francisco. We had been discussing the meaty issue of how much to explain in our short stories
Not Unlike…
Readings in World Literature Srikanth Reddy Omnidawn, 2012 42 pages $11.95 Editor’s note: P. Scott Stanfield holds a Ph.D. in English and teaches literature at Nebraska Wesleyan University. Recently, I challenged him to see how many references to other works and artists he could make in a single 500-word
THAT LIT, LIT LIFE (with global characteristics) 1 (of 14)
When you’re around the world’s literati, you’re usually a little lit. A bit inebriated. Slightly slurred. Deliciously drunk. Oh, on words of course (Mais oui! What else?). Or if you’re running an international, low-residency MFA with Asian characteristics, you’re intoxicated in multiple Englishes and other languages. Let’s talk about
Literary Boroughs #13: Los Angeles, California
The Literary Boroughs series will explore little-known and well-known literary communities across the country and world and show that while literary culture can exist online without regard to geographic location, it also continues to thrive locally. Posts are by no means exhaustive and we encourage our readers to contribute in the comment section. The
How I’m Spending my Summer
My wife told me to lead with the woman peeing. So I will. It was 5:30 last Sunday morning and I watched a woman pee herself. She announced she was doing it. Mumbling something about fascists, she said she hated that the bathrooms were locked and then she pissed
Bridging the Divide: Why I Brought My Mom to Bread Loaf
I didn’t grow up in what I would call a literary family. We delivered newspapers; we didn’t read them. We told stories constantly, but we never wrote them down. My mom is a housekeeper. All her life she has never taken a sick day. No work meant no paycheck.
The Neruda Case
The Neruda Case Roberto Ampuero Riverhead, June 2012 352 pages $26.95 Pablo Neruda has a problem: he’s ancient and dying of cancer, but he yearns for an ex-lover who may—or may not—have given birth to a long-lost daughter. As he faces death (“the old woman with the scythe”) he