Lauren Groff’s second novel, Arcadia, gorgeously renders a commune’s rise, fall, and life-long resonance for the people who grew up within it. Unfolding as a series of snapshots, the book’s events span the birth of this late-1960s utopia and its central character, Bit Stone, to his middle age in a bleak—and imminent—dystopic future.
1983. Wisconsin farmhouse wedding. A horrific incident that haunts the Kenney siblings for decades to come. Jennifer Taylor calls Carol Anshaw’s new novel, Carry the One, a “compelling psychological examination of lives altered by a tragic accident.”
In conversation with Julie Judkins, author Scott Nadelson discusses how the “mad mystic hammering” of Bob Dylan inspired him to become a writer, why being a formerly reluctant reader informs his teaching, and how New Jersey has evolved in his fiction from an actual place to a state of being.
National Geographic recently released a list of the “Top 10 Literary Cities.” But it seems a bit controversial to me. Here’s the ranking:
1. Edinburgh, Scotland
2. Dublin, Ireland
3. London, England
4. Paris, France
5. St. Petersburg, Russia
6. Stockholm, Sweden
7. Portland, Oregon, USA
8. Washington, D.C., USA
9. Melbourne, Australia
10. Santiago, Chile
You read that right: Portland, Oregon, is in the [...]
In her sixth novel, State of Wonder, Ann Patchett delivers an adventure story that still rests comfortably on the shelf of Literary Fiction. Researcher Marina Singh leaves her Minnesota lab for the Amazon to investigate a coworker’s death and evaluate the research of a field team deep in the jungle.
I live in the 02138 zip code, popularly known around here as “the nation’s most opinionated zip code,” thanks to the hordes of Harvard and MIT students. I’m not sure about that title–94720 could probably give it some competition–but I like the idea that a zip code, which is really just an arbitrary zone, [...]
Daniel Orozco’s debut has been a long time coming. Now fans of his prizewinning fiction can enjoy an entire collection, Orientation: And Other Stories. Michael Shilling calls him in Idaho to talk geographic love letters, G. Gordon Liddy, and the peculiar challenge of gimmicks.
Donald Lystra, who published his first novel Season of Water and Ice after retiring from a career as an engineer, talks about making the transition from engineering to writing, publishing with a small press, winning a Midwest Book Award, and what people get wrong about the 1950s.
When WTO protestors mobbed downtown Seattle in 1999, breaking windows and burning dumpsters, Keith Scribner was a new father, and it made him wonder how it would feel to have that chaos on his own street. In an interview with J.T. Bushnell, Scribner talks about how those thoughts sparked his newest novel, The Oregon Experiment, what it means to pursue the writing life, and why perfume labels don’t list the ingredients.
In her first novel, Swamplandia! (Knopf, 2011), acclaimed short story writer Karen Russell (St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves) renders a highly specific shoebox-world of wonder and mystery. Set in the Florida swamps, largely within a fictional alligator theme park, the sun rises and sets with her lush yet economical descriptions and poignant characterizations of the 14-year-old protagonist, Ava, and her rapidly dissolving family.
