The other day on Facebook, as a fun twist on Throwback Thursday, author and publisher Michael Seidlinger asked a “throwback” question: “The first book you read that blew your mind?” The question elicited a few hundred responses, many of which felt nostalgic for me: Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” which remains one of my favorite long stories ever; Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451,Continue reading “The book that made me a writer”
Category Archives: writers
Letters of Note: Make your soul grow
This story about Kurt Vonnegut writing to a student is an old story, but it came across my Facebook feed again today and it got me thinking. I remember when I was in 5th grade, my language arts class went down to the school library and we got into the Contemporary Authors books in theContinue reading “Letters of Note: Make your soul grow”
Reading from Hagridden at Lit Demon
A while back, I announced that I’ll be doing an online reading from Hagridden. That’s online, as in streaming video, live on your computer while you trim your fingernails and pick your nose (don’t worry — you can see me, but I can’t see you). This all goes down on Thursday, June 5, from 6-7 pmContinue reading “Reading from Hagridden at Lit Demon”
My favorite writers (who happen to be women)
A few days ago, author Mary Miller published a piece in Vol. 1 Brooklyn called “My Problem with VIDA: A Report from the Field.” In it, Miller expresses how “uncomfortable” she is with the gender statistics that the VIDA Report gathers and distributes — or rather, with the way in which such statistics gender our considerationContinue reading “My favorite writers (who happen to be women)”
The jobs we work
The jobs we do become the stories we write. That old axiom, “Write what you know,” might as well be “Write what you’ve done.” I’ve been thinking about that as I work on an essay about setting in fiction, because part of that essay talks about how the places I’ve worked become places in myContinue reading “The jobs we work”
Dream journal: writers, journeys, and complicated futons
I sometimes have dreams so vivid I have to write them down when I wake up. Sometimes those things wind up in notebooks, other times they wind up on Facebook (and sometimes they wind up as fiction), and, recently, I’ve decided to let them start showing up here. I don’t anticipate this becoming a regularContinue reading “Dream journal: writers, journeys, and complicated futons”
Attend a literary reading in your underwear
You know you’ve always wanted to. Now, thanks to the Lit Demon, you can attend a whole reading series from the comfort of your bathrobe. The website that’s bringing you online creative writing workshops and editing services and a range of other awesomeness is now scheduling a series of readings, online, streaming live right into yourContinue reading “Attend a literary reading in your underwear”
A signed copy Box Cutters if you help Molly Gaudry fly
Do you know Molly Gaudry? Because you should. I don’t want to bury the lead, so if you want to get to know her, start by helping her out at Fly with Molly. But more on that in the minute. I mention this because I’m a huge fan of Molly. She’s a hell of a writer —Continue reading “A signed copy Box Cutters if you help Molly Gaudry fly”
Every Kiss a War, from Leesa Cross-Smith
I just bought Leesa Cross-Smith‘s debut story collection, Every Kiss a War, out from Mojave River Press. I was going to buy this book anyway, because I’m a fan of Cross-Smith’s work, both in terms of her own fiction and in terms of her fantastic literary magazine, WhiskeyPaper. (I had a story in WhiskeyPaper aContinue reading “Every Kiss a War, from Leesa Cross-Smith”
My Writing Process
By now, you’ve probably heard about this whole #MyWritingProcessTour thing, a kind of literary chain-letter meme that’s been making the rounds among writers lately. It’s a fun project, I think, because it gives us all a bit of insight into each other’s writing lives and it helps introduce each other to other writers. In fact,Continue reading “My Writing Process”
Samuel Snoek-Brown 