Over the last decade the Nobel Prize for Literature has alternated between a proscriptive award and a descriptive one. A proscriptive award takes little known but worthy authors and presents them in a bow and wrapping to the world, telling everyone to read. A descriptive award honors the authors that have, to a large extent, […]
Is a writer merely defined as someone who writes or are there additional qualities required? The way that creative writers use the term Writer, I’ve noticed, is limited to people who write creatively. They say “Writers” and exclude all those people whose expertise is in another field, the people who dip into writing only to […]
In Slate, Scott Kenemore argues that the latest Poets and Writers’ Rankings are a travesty, but his reasoning is self-centered and misleading. Let’s look at why Kenemore thinks that Columbia deserves to be ranked highly (in 2nd place behind Iowa): Because the last rankings had them high. As he says, “A few years ago, U.S. News […]
Maud Newton’s essay on David Foster Wallace in the New York Times, suitably categorized under “riff,” situates Wallace’s idiosyncratic use of language inside a generational context while critiquing its extravagances. But I found it notable that she only dealt with his older texts. Many of the stylistic distinctions that she brings up were abandoned (or at […]
John Hodgman on The Daily Show parses out the future of brick and mortar bookstores, recommending they go the way of curiosity shops, like canadian pharmacy onhealthy Colonial Williamsburg. The Daily Show – Borders Goes Out of BusinessGet More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook
Sixty years into Shenandoah’s august literary life, the literary journal has just launched its first online issue. My short story “To Will One Thing” is one of the fiction selections. Please read it and tell me your thoughts. The online version also features: Local artwork by William Dunlap (full gallery of artwork) R.T. Smith writes […]
I’m going to the Squaw Valley Writers conference in early August, and looking forward to the wonderful cast of aspirants and teachers. If you’re going as well, drop me a line and we’ll make sure to talk while we’re there. I’ll try to remember to give a run down on the blog once I return, […]
Hello Everyone, Currently I'm in Xi'an, China, researching a short story. It's a story that I wrote four years ago but which never quite worked (likely because I wasn't good enough to accomplish the ambitious structure). Back then I read more than twenty books on the Cultural Revolution, and acheived a degree of versimilitude, but […]
The Bakeless Prize has rockstar taste. Last year they published Belle Boggs’ “Mattaponi Queen,” which went on to garner a bouquet of accolades, and this year they’re publishing the astonishing “American Masculine” by Shann Ray, a frontrunner for my favorite book of the year. “American Masculine” is the perfect title. The stories are rough and raw, […]
I read David Foster Wallace’s “The Pale King” in late April, soon after its release date, but our introduction felt secondhand. It was like meeting a friend whose reputation had preceded him. Every page seemed filtered through the viewpoints of pundits of every stripe and pedigree, whom I’d consumed in the media frenzy anticipating the […]
