A couple of weeks ago, the Nobel committee in Stockholm announced that Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer had won this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature. Congrats, Tomas Transtromer! But apparently I’m in the minority over here in the US, because Americans in general have been booing the Nobel Prize for a few years now, ever since Horace Engdahl, theContinue reading “How to win the Nobel Prize (by eating a puppy)”
Tag Archives: writing
Writer’s Notebook: Coffee story (with apologies to Orhan Pamuk)
This is not done. It’s probably not even good. But it’s been an interesting exercise. But I’ll explain more later. I can tell you only a little about the man and woman before they entered my shop. They both were new, you see, and so much of what I know about them I know onlyContinue reading “Writer’s Notebook: Coffee story (with apologies to Orhan Pamuk)”
Writer’s Notebook: Holiday story
I’m sort of semi-cheating this week. I am working on an exercise, but the story I’m working on will eventually show up online as a story, so I’d rather keep it under wraps while I work on it. Still, I want to offer something along the same lines here, so behold, a quick excerpt fromContinue reading “Writer’s Notebook: Holiday story”
Writer’s Notebook: a few thoughts on writing
This week, I have one of my classes writing about a personal belief. It’s going to lead them to a personal essay, so what I’m about to do is a pretty poor example of what they’re up to, but when I began thinking of topics I might tackle in order to write along with them,Continue reading “Writer’s Notebook: a few thoughts on writing”
Faulkner-Wisdom 2011
Last year, I was thrilled to find myself in a couple of finalist lists for the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society’s Faulkner-Wisdom Creative Writing Competition. So this year, I took a chance and sent in a new story, “Curl Up and Burn.” I’ve been waiting all summer for the results, and now I’m thrilled once againContinue reading “Faulkner-Wisdom 2011”
Writer’s Notebook: a new beginning
I know. I missed last week’s Notebook and when you scroll down in a minute, you’re going to find a blank page. This is a good thing. See, I’ve landed a new teaching job and a tutoring gig, I’m working on a project for my Buddhist center, and I’m reading for Jersey Devil Press. PlusContinue reading “Writer’s Notebook: a new beginning”
A Writer’s Notebook: family history
This one rambles, but it’s an exercise and it’s rough, so bear with me. I used to read books. I mean on paper, pages made of wood pulp pressed flat in huge machines, cut and stitched or glued together and then cut again, printed with ink and bound in cardstock covers. When I turned theContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: family history”
New publication
Remember when I was sitting in at Ryan Werner’s Our Band Could Be Your Lit project? Well, as of today, one of the stories from those sessions appears in issue 24 of the excellent Jersey Devil Press. The story is “Colony.” And I’m super-psyched, because JDP is awesome. You can also download a .pdf ofContinue reading “New publication”
A Writer’s Notebook: tarot story
Last week, riffing off a clip of The Daily Show, I wrote short bit about how cool it would be to do live “writings,” like a reading in a bookstore or a library but instead of reading existing work, we’d write something new, live, on the fly, according to ideas tossed at us from an audience. And then,Continue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: tarot story”
New publication (this one’s big)
I’ve been sitting on this one for a while, waiting for news of its imminent arrival, but it’s been hard because I’m really excited about this one: issue 3 of Sententia is publishing an excerpt from my Civil War novel Hagridden (which long-time readers might remember from NaNoWriMo 2009). Today I got news that the issueContinue reading “New publication (this one’s big)”
Samuel Snoek-Brown 