Matt Kish of “Moby Dick in Pictures” designed this incredible book cover for Robert Kloss’ “The Alligators of Abraham.” Below you can see his first attempt at the cover. But how much better is that second version, right?
Category: Writing Life
- The Alligators of Abraham
- Fun Speed Reading Test
I got 872 words a minute, but most other tests clock me at 700 or slower. Still, a nice little test. Source: Staples eReader Department
- AWP Pins Transformed into Magnets
It’s been a week since AWP ended. If you’re like me, you still haven’t thrown out the things you collected from the main floor that were cool at the moment but quickly transformed into tchotchkes in the light of the real world. Say, for instance, pins. Yeah, every lit journal gave away pins with tiny logos […]
- AWP 2012
Excited for the AWP conference, only a few short weeks away. Authors! Readings! Schmoozing! Dancing! (Yes, there is the legendary dance party, happening … nightly). A whole host of literary heavyweights will be there, but as I’ve discovered from years past, the most exciting part of AWP is not the famous writers but the rank […]
- What Could Be Worse Than A Male Book Club?
The most painful situation the writers of this Velveeta commercial could come up with was … a male book club. That's right: talking about books with other men is equivalent to torture. Of course, the sidekicks are willing to suffer cheap medicine online through such torture to win the Velveeta prize. But who knows, perhaps […]
- Aimee Bender’s “Bad Return”: A Sentence Analysis
Here are the first two sentences of Aimee Bender’s “Bad Return” in One Story #158: “I met Arlene in college, in the freshman dorm. We were not roommates but suite-mates in the corner section of a squat brick house in the center of a small college campus in the middle of Ohio.” Pay attention to […]
- Kazuo Ishiguro’s “When We Were Orphans”
In a writing workshop, a friend of mine once criticized Kazuo Ishiguro for his novel “Never Let Me Go,” which my friend claimed was a science fiction novel that refused to embrace its science fiction roots. It’s true that the science fiction conceits in “Never Let Me Go” are largely glossed over. Most of the book […]
- First Book Read in 2012
Quiz Time: In this J.M. Coetzee novel, a professor interacts with a disadvantaged member of another race during the apartheid in South Africa. If you guessed Disgrace, you can be forgiven. After all, the plot line is identical to this novel written nearly a decade before: Age of Iron. The eerie similarities between the novels gave […]
- New Issue of Confrontation
The new issue of Confrontation is out, issue #110, with cover art by Claudio Bravo (“Red, Rose and Orange Paper”). It’s a timely homage to the recently deceased Chilean painter. Inside the journal are a number of glossy full-color pages showcasing Bravo’s other work. Paul Zimerman’s “Full Remittance,” a kind of anti-Rakolnikovian story, is excellent, […]