Thoughts from the Hopwood Room: Dale Peck and the Compliment of Criticism
Dale Peck visits the Hopwood Room and talks about the difference between “good book reviews” and “smart book reviews.”
Dale Peck visits the Hopwood Room and talks about the difference between “good book reviews” and “smart book reviews.”
In 2009, Narrative Magazine published Anthony Marra’s short story “Chechnya.” He was a student at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop then and “Chechnya” was his first published story. It won a Pushcart Prize before Marra expanded it into his first published novel, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, released this week by Hogarth. Lauded by Ann Patchett for being the most “ambitious and fully realized” first novel since Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena connects the lives of six characters surviving the dense hellscape of war-torn Chechnya, 1994-2004. I finished the novel two days before last […]
Once upon a time in Seattle I lived with a lawyer, a librarian, an engineer, and a retailer. We threw dance-y parties and hosted champagne and apricot scone brunches. We read by the fireplace and played after dinner games of Settlers of Catan. And although we did not know one another prior to moving in together—we met the old-fashion way, on craigslist—we became close. It started with the lawyer, and after a time the whole house was online dating. They, like many twenty-odds, were using OkCupid—“the Google of online dating.” Soon, our wholesome after dinner board games changed to after […]
Italo Calvino once said, “A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” For author Kevin Smokler, who spent last year re-reading 50 “classics,” the dictum rings true.
Engaged and opening a bookstore in downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan, Michael Gustafson and Hilary Lowe are in love, with each other and with books. Literati Bookstore, currently Gustafson and Lowe’s labor of love (the floors are going in today), is scheduled to open late next month. Today, on the Literati Bookstore blog, Gustafson and Lowe offer a list of their favorite love stories. Take a look, add to their list, and follow the progress of some serious literature lovers. Love is everywhere: in our protagonists, our antagonists, and our favorite books. Today, Hilary and I quickly scanned our personal bookshelves […]
Colson Whitehead visits the Hopwood Room and talks about how to give yourself authorial permission.
The afternoon I sat in a lawn chair on the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street in front of my house reading Maeve Brennan’s “Christmas Eve” a gang of basketball players wearing flashing neon onesies, singing “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” could have committed an armed robbery on my neighbor’s house—and if we’re to venture further down the path of hyperbole, their get away car would have been a hot air balloon—and I would have failed to notice the entire event. It was August 8, 2009, my mother’s birthday. She would have been 60, my […]
The Hopwood room roundtable is a weekly event in which established writers discourse with the University of Michigan’s student body, faculty, and anyone in the area who is interested in writing and reading. Last week David Mitchell was in town as the University of Michigan Zell distinguished writer in residence. As the writer in residence, Mitchell sat in for a roundtable discussion in the Hopwood room, a room he described endearingly as a Harry Potterish, cult leader’s den. For an hour, he fielded questions from writers, teachers, and academics, and one kid interested in infanticide in literature. Mitchell, all charm […]
Summer reading lists get all the attention, but with the days getting shorter and the nights getting colder you’ll need something to crack open fireside, that cozy Afghan wrapped around your legs, the warmth of your hot toddy working your bloodstream like a magician working a Vegas showroom. Here, Five Winter Reads “The Overcoat” by Nikolai Gogol In truth, Gogol’s immortal short story, which positions the popular 19th century Russian lit trope “the little man” in the face a coldhearted, crushing bureaucratic system, is most effective with a certain level of Russian studies under the belt. But don’t that dissuade […]
