A Knack for Names
I once read (though the source is now lost to me) that the names of the characters in a novel do the work of telling the reader what world he’s in. Musicality, characterization, hints at a character’s gender, ethnicity, and social status—all of these are important in a name.
On the Road with “The Lady of Shalott”
On long drives, I’ve found various ways to occupy myself. Like choreographing tap dances to “Annabel Lee,” working out how to sing the “Brady Bunch” theme song to the tune of “Ode to Joy,” and attempting to memorize Tennyson’s “Lady of Shalott,” my project as I drove from PA
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Edna in Rain” by Marie-Helene Bertino
Marie-Helene Bertino, in her short story, “Edna in Rain,” (Gulf Coast Winter/Spring 2015), goes to great lengths to make every aspect of her fictional world ordinary, in order that it might more clearly illuminate the absurdities of our own contemporary world. And making her fictional world ordinary is
This Winter’s Must-Reads
There is no better way to pass the coldest season of the year than by cozying up with a good book, and 2015 has started off with a bang. Here are our picks for this winter’s best literary offerings. Disgruntled Asali Solomon FSG, February 3 $26 Buy: book ∣ebook
The Millennial-Gen X Rift Part II: the MFA System And A Digital Latina/o Literary Renaissance
Hector Tobar wouldn’t be the first to speculate about a contemporary Latina/o literary renaissance. That hype has been around for a long, long while. It surrounded the work of Gen X Latina/o writers beginning to publish in the mid to late 90’s and early 2000’s of which Junot Diaz
Round-Down: the Cost of Higher Minimum Wage for Bookstores
A recent article in the San Francisco Gate announced the imminent closing of yet another bookstore–Borderlands Books, which exclusively sells, according to its website, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and horror titles. It’s sad news, no doubt, but it’s also—pun unintended but liked—downright scary news. On its current home page,
Daily Details Made Monumental
Exterior details lend themselves to the interior landscape of a character or narrator. What one chooses to notice, how one describes an object, says more about the speaker than it does about that thing. A character who spends a whole paragraph noticing someone’s unwashed, unkempt hair tells the reader
(Writing) Exercise: Self-compassion
I’m talking here of memory’s difficulty. Difficult not in the way I have to wrack my weak brain to remember what happened, but in the way I’m forced to face that time I let my brother, bleeding from the mouth, run the mile home alone. Difficult in the way
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “This Place of Great Peril” by Mel Bosworth
When we meet the main character of Mel Bosworth’s “This Place of Great Peril” (Hayden’s Ferry Review Fall/Winter 2014), he’s just beginning to suffer from acute oxygen deprivation, or as editor Dana Diehl puts it, the author “drops us on top of the 84th tallest mountain in the world,
Do-Overs: Reflecting His Story
Recently, Carolyn Kellogg wrote her 6 Wishes for Books and Publishing in 2015 in the LA Times. Number three: “No more novels based on literary figures.” Amen, sister. Lately there’s been a glut of stodgy novels dedicated to backwards-mapping literary lives. Though the work might benefit from proximate popularity