Cynthia Ozick has a new collection of short stories — or at least a novella accompanied by three stories, so a quartet of stories would be more accurate. “Dictation” came out in mid-March, but we’ve not seen the type of coverage I’d expect, except for the faithful Complete Review and some coverage given by Bookforum. […]
Because of the budget crisis in L.A., Mayor Villaraigosa has been cracking down on the LA public library — not only freezing journal and database subscriptions but limiting new book purchases. Now there’s apparently a plan to charge a fee for library books that come from other library branches. So naturally, there’s a big hullabaloo […]
It was quite nice to see a post from The Elegant Variation reprinted in the May issue of Harper’s magazine. With a clever title — Textually Transmissible — the piece, translated from the French by Dorna Khazeni, is hilarious, especially if you’re familiar with Michel Houellebecq’s sexually infused novels or, Houellebecq aside, know the literary […]
Zoran Zivkovic, a Serbian writer, has his short story collection “Steps Through the Mist” reviewed. ZYZZYVA recaps the rejections that turned out to be mistakes, as well as quite a funny response to a rejection by Howard Junker himself. Over at Ward Six there’s a discussion of the Alice Munro story “Material,” finishing up with […]
Over at Pinky’s Paperhaus there’s a post about a new development with the Short Story Review — they’re going to start podcasting short stories in September of 2008, and are already reading submissions. It’s a new journal, with only two issues out, but now fifty-two stories a year will be podcasted, selected from the jaws […]
Over at Papercuts, Dwight Garner reveals that last night Jhumpa Lahiri soared into the number one spot on the New York Times Bestseller list with her collection of short stories, “Unaccustomed Earth.” When’s the last time a short story collection was #1? Glad you asked, because I was willing to guess virtually never, but then […]
Over at Literary Rejections on Display, there’s a list of reasons why agents/publishers rejected a particular author’s last two manuscripts. It’s hilarious, as long as you don’t get depressed easily. And couldn’t you see this in one of the sidebars of Harper’s Magazine? we find this book too complicated for our readers we think there […]
Dan over at Emerging Writers Network points out a new trend among literary journals, such as Fence and American Short Fiction, to “pay what you can” for a subscription to their journal. A smart move, I believe. Journals need some kind of marketing to jumpstart their subscription base. How literary journal rejections that take over […]
Just wanted to update the short story collections that should be on your horizon. In addition to the many I listed back in January, there are a couple of heavy-hitters coming out in Fall. First, Annie Proulx has a collection of more Wyoming stories coming out from Scriber in September: “Fine Just the Way It […]
Junot Diaz, who just won the Pulitzer Prize for “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”, commenting on life as a celebrity of the short story form: “Being a hot young short-story writer is like being a hot young up-and-coming pastry chef.” Who really knows or cares in the real world?” (Interviewed in Newsweek)
