People who know me know how ready I am to rail against standardized education. I have long believed in student-based teaching, so while I agree that we ought to hold our students to some level of excellence, the standards of that excellence should be established in cooperation with the students–each student should have not onlyContinue reading “National education standards?”
Author Archives: Samuel Snoek-Brown
A short story
Just a short note to say I’ve added a previously published story to the site here. One of my first short-shorts, “Consuela Throws Her TV Away,” appeared in Orchid: A Literary Review back in 2003, but it was never available online and the magazine has now stopped publishing, so I thought it might be niceContinue reading “A short story”
Barry Hannah
Barry Hannah will leave a gaping hole in literature. His influence on my own work is strangely subtle and roundabout (I know him more for his influence on others–especially Tom Franklin–than for anything else), but when I think about the stories I’ve read, I realize how deeply effective they were. For all the brashness ofContinue reading “Barry Hannah”
A Writer’s Notebook: Outrunning the Critic
This comes from Brian Kiteley‘s The 3 A.M. Epiphany, some exercises from which appear on his University of Denver web page. For the exercise (which I copied and pasted below), click here. Sharon works as a bookkeeper for a senior center on the backside of town. Sharon knows her husband is distracted, knows he lovedContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: Outrunning the Critic”
Women writers
I can’t write a post about women’s literature. I could, but it’s not my field of study and I’d just wind up offending the scholars who know what they’re talking about. But I can list some of the women authors and poets I admire most, which is all this is. And by all means, ifContinue reading “Women writers”
Dr. Seuss was Greek
I just wanted to jump in here and say hello to my friends and brothers at Sigma Phi Epsilon–Wisconsin Theta. SigEp is an outstanding fraternity based on the ideal of a balanced man and promoting the core values of Virtue, Diligence, and Brotherly Love. They seek to undo the negative stereotyping associated with many fraternities,Continue reading “Dr. Seuss was Greek”
Patrons of writing and teaching: The Muses
As I reviewed my list of writing patrons today, I realized that most of my patrons are women. I don’t know why this is, or what this might mean for my writing. A few years ago a friend pointed out The Gender Genie, an online gender analysis tool for prose–just paste in a chunk ofContinue reading “Patrons of writing and teaching: The Muses”
Chile earthquake
Though the scale of the recent earthquake in Chile was significantly larger than the one in Haiti, the damage has so far been mercifully less. Still, Chileans are going to need help to recover from this traumatic disruption, so as I did with Haiti, I’m going to list some relief agencies you can contact toContinue reading “Chile earthquake”
A Writer’s Notebook: Revision
I’m chest deep in a revision of my novel right now, but I’m also reading Alice Munro, who makes me want to work on short fiction. So I figured this week, I’d put my hands together and do a revision exercise on one of my long-problematic short stories. Because this is slightly complicated, I’m goingContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: Revision”
A Writer’s Notebook: First line
For the exercise, see below. Henrietta stood nervously on the railway platform watching the passengers disembark. She could smell the grime down between tracks, the grease built up in the undercarriage, the stale odor of the passengers as their sweat and breath mingled with their alcohol, their cheese sandwiches, their dry newsprint, all of itContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: First line”
Samuel Snoek-Brown 