Conversations about Conversations & Connections Conference, Sept. 22, 2012

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
Haven’t heard about the Conversations and Connections Conference yet? I got the inside scoop on this writer’s conference, which will be held on September 22, 2012 in Philadelphia, from Dave Housley and Susan Muaddi-Darraj, co-founders of the conference and editors at Barrelhouse. If you are interested in speed dating

Literary Boroughs #15: Indianapolis, IN

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
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

Writing Soundtrack: A Step-by-Step Playlist

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
A month ago the author Mat Johnson (Pym, Drop, Incognegro) went crowdsourcing on his Facebook page for new music to write to. He’d been listening and writing to Endtroducing by DJ Shadow for years and he’d exhausted the thing. It got me to thinking about what makes good writing music. I

To italicize or not to italicize? Authors speak up on the use of ‘foreign’ words in prose (Part II)

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
Sometimes when writing, I hover the cursor over the I symbol in the Microsoft Word toolbox for several seconds as I grapple with whether or not to italicize a word or a phrase in Spanish. It is in such moments that I am faced with broader questions about my

Canada

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
Canada Richard Ford Ecco, May 2012 432 pages $27.99 I found myself humming Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson” while reading Richard Ford’s Canada—only instead of “Joe Diamaggio,” I sang “Frank Bascombe,” the hero of the Ford Trilogy that began with the Sportswriter, peaked with Independence Day, and closed with

THAT LIT, LIT LIFE (with global characteristics) 2 (of 14)

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
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

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
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

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
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)

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
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…

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
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