Category: Writing Life

  • Best Short Story Collections of the Decade image of tag icon

    So here are my picks for best short prescription medication online no prescription story collections of the decade. If you want another take, check out the A.V. Club’s choices — we got a few in common, but a whole lot of differences. If you think I missed one, you’re wrong. Probably. But if you insist […]

    December 14, 2009

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  • Best Short Story Collection 2009 — Guest Post by Larry Dark image of tag icon

    “The Size of the World” by Joan Silber (Norton) In 2004, Joan Silber published a book of stories, “Ideas of Heaven,” that introduced a new way of structuring a collection. A character or other element in one story, would take center stage in the next, with the last story connecting back to the first, completing […]

    December 9, 2009

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  • Best Short Story Collection 2009 — Guest Post by Dan Wickett image of tag icon

    Each year I do my best to read the two short story collections that the University of Georgia Press publish as winners of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. This year, one of the two books, “The Bigness of the World” by Lori Ostlund, has deservedly been seeing some attention. So, I’m going to […]

    December 8, 2009

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  • Best Short Story Collection 2009 — Guest Post by Travis Kurowski image of tag icon

     What the World Will Look Like When the Water Leaves Us Laura van den Berg Dzanc Books, 2009 Every six months or so I interview a short story writer I like for Luna Park, a writer who has a new collection of stories coming out and whose stuff I had seen awhile in literary magazines […]

    December 7, 2009

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  • Best Books of 2009 image of tag icon

    During the next week, I’m going to be posting some recommendations for the best short story collections of 2009, as recommended by various experts (and I do mean experts — got some knowledgeable peeps ready to hold forth). Until that point, however, I refer you to some of the best-of lists cropping up about town. […]

    December 2, 2009

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  • Tod Goldberg Interview on “Other Resort Cities” image of tag icon

    Tod Goldberg writes short stories (Simplify) and novels (Living Dead Girl), in addition to just being a hilarious guy (see: blog). He’s also the Director of the MFA program at UC Riverside Palm Desert. BookFox had the opportunity to interview him by email for the release of his latest collection, “Other Resort Cities.” BookFox: So […]

    November 23, 2009

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  • Joan Didion and the Avoidance of Cliche image of tag icon

    The Morning News has a great memoir piece, a very new journalism/memoir style called "Joan Didion Crosses the Street." Out of a simple chance encounter with Joan Didion on a public street V.L. Hartmann reconstructs the significance of Joan Didion to her own childhood and her parents generation: When I was a teenager my mother […]

    November 20, 2009

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  • Cormac McCarthy Interview image of tag icon

    Cormac McCarthy gives one of his once-in-a-blue-moon interviews to WSJ (to promote the new movie “The Road.”). So I guess there is someone other than Oprah that can coax him out of hiding. His caustic humor is sure in full form, though: WSJ: When you first went to the film set, how did it compare with […]

    November 13, 2009

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  • The Drawbacks of Diversity in Book Lists image of tag icon

     A lot of people have been complaining about the lack of women on the Publishers Weekly top ten list. For commentary, check out the NY Times, The Rumpus, and The Arts Blog. I have a problem not with this particular attempt to encourage diversification (and it is pretty strange that not a single woman appeared on […]

    November 5, 2009

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  • Responses to Amazon/Walmart Price Wars over Books image of tag icon

    Emily Pullen at Skylight Books blog: What kind of soulless person would think that cheaper isn’t better? According to Merriam Webster, the verb to cheapen also means “to lower in general esteem; to make tawdry, vulgar, or inferior in some moral sense.” And frankly, that’s something that I’d rather not do to our concept of […]

    October 31, 2009

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