On the Virginia Quarterly Review blog, Michael Lukas worries that AWP’s heightened emphasis on the short story is a contributing factor to what he calls the “Short Story Bubble”–and its eventual burst. I’m not sure I entirely buy his argument, but hey, it’s worth discussing…
All around the country, thousands of young fiction writers are scribbling [...]
This sounds like an Onion article. It’s not.
From now on, no sign produced by Birmingham City Council will contain the punctuation mark.
Debates over whether Kings Norton really should be King’s – or even Kings’ – Norton may rage on, but they will be useless. And nearby Druids Heath – which was never actually home to [...]
Harper Perennial is already building buzz for its upcoming Summer of the Short Story campaign, declaring that “it’s high time to celebrate the much-loved, but oft-overlooked, short story form.” The publisher will promote six new collections (due to publish this summer and fall)—along with six collections of classic shorts. The festivities will begin in earnest [...]
Support and discuss the short story by picking up a copy of Antonya Nelson’s latest collection Nothing Right and/or Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum’s Swimming with Strangers.
Sadness.
Book World was one of the last remaining stand-alone book review sections in the country, along with the New York Times Book Review. The Washington Post’s move comes as the company, like most other newspaper businesses across the country, has been hobbled by a protracted downturn in advertising. [...] “This is disheartening,” said Jane Ciabattari, [...]
Sad news: John Updike succumbed to lung cancer today at the age of 76.
William Pritchard has drawn up a list of what he considers the author’s most important works here.
I remember hiding the Rabbit books under my bed as a teenager, loving how Updike could write even the dirtiest moments so beautifully. His prose is [...]
According to a new report by the NEA (“Reading on the Rise: A New Chapter in American Literacy”), the percentage of US adults reading fiction is growing for the first time in a quarter-century (chart borrowed from the NY Times). But I’m not ready to hit the street with pom-poms and a marching band just [...]
I swore I wasn’t even going to blog about the whole Angel at the Fence debacle, but then I saw this: that York House Press hopes to publish this so-called “fake memoir” by a Holocaust survivor as a work of fiction; this book certainly contains some fictional (or, it could be argued, mis-remembered) details–including the [...]
According to the Bookseller, Lorrie Moore’s new novel — her first in over a decade — is coming out in 2009. Stephen Page at British publisher Faber gushes that A Gate at the Stairs “is a masterpiece for our times and only re-enforces her as one of the great writers of our age,” and Vicky [...]
