Nick Ostdick talks with Megan Stielstra about the 2nd Story reading series in Chicago and a new anthology of performed essays from the series’ ten-year history, Briefly Knocked Unconscious by a Low-Flying Duck, which she co-edited.
Beneath an unassuming demeanor, Pushcart Prize-winning Robert Garner McBrearty writes stories of the revolution. The former dishwasher on the mythologies of the American West, the bravery of small presses, Colonel William B. Travis, and why he feels solidarity with scrappy underlings.
Alissa Nutting has “story” written in ink on every page of Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, her lively, well-imagined, and jaw-droppingly smart prize-winning debut. Imagine Donald Barthelme writing smart feminine narratives, Mary Gaitskill sans the kinky sex, or Margaret Atwood turning to dry, Colbert-style humor, and you may start to get an idea of what to expect.
Two recent releases from Dzanc imprint Keyhole Press expand the scope of literary fiction. How to Predict the Weather by Aaron Burch and How They Were Found by Matt Bell create provocative new worlds in their debut collections of short stories. Consistent with this press’s production of thought-provoking fiction, Burch and Bell unravel beautiful and unsettling tales with exquisite prose.
In Binocular Vision: New & Selected Stories, Edith Pearlman grabs the reader’s attention and never lets it go. In this review, Andrea Nolan looks at some of Pearlman’s first lines and examines how her stories are united through character, theme, and place.
In Meg Pokrass’ debut collection of flash fiction, Damn Sure Right, each story gives the reader just enough to imagine a universe. Lee Thomas and Pokrass discuss first publication, the harmony between poetry and short short stories, and the soundtrack to the author’s creative process.
The founders of Tin House – magazine, book publisher, workshop destination – put their mission best, so I won’t try to improve upon it:
The first issue of Tin House magazine arrived in the spring of 1999, the singular lovechild of an eclectic literary journal and a beautiful glossy magazine. Publisher Win McCormack said of the [...]
Addicted to browsing the shelves of used bookstores for that $3 copy of Chekhov’s stories? Sad you can’t do the same with your e-reader? Well, Dzanc’s eBook Club comes close, letting you gather an armful of fiction at a fraction of the retail price. Here’s how it works:
Dzanc Books is excited to announce the launching [...]
Over at MelvilleHouse Publishing there’s an interesting blog post, In Support of Translation, along with responses, about the Best Translated Book Award being funded by Amazon. Editor Dennis Loy Johnson writes:
As the winner of the most recent Best Translated Book (BTB) prize for fiction — for our book, The Confessions of Noa Weber, by Gail [...]
How much does a book cost? What’s the value of a book? Obvious as it sounds, those are two separate questions—but as Kassia Krozser points out on her lit blog Booksquare, they’re often conflated by readers and publishers alike:
The publisher sold readers a book they knew was not very good. Yes, the publisher [...]
