August 17, 2011
The newspaper & the novel: On book reviews
Tom Lutz, the editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books, has written an eloquent state of the union on publishing and book reviewing, in response to this summer’s news […]
August 5, 2011
Reading and its opposites (or, things I learned from listening to 39 hours of Tony Judt’s Postwar)
In another post I wrote about the experience of not reading Roberto Bola??o, and yesterday, as I headed into hour 39 of the 43-hour audiobook of Judt’s magisterial Postwar, I […]
July 21, 2011
A machine or a book
This week as I blog for the Kenyon Review, I am in fact at Kenyon College, visiting during the Kenyon Review Young Writers’ Workshop–getting as an outsider to witness and […]
July 12, 2011
Further notes on literature from the Middle East
As a follow-up to the interviews with Philip Metres, Sinan Antoon, Therese Soukar Chehade, and Nathalie Handal posted earlier this summer, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point to some […]
July 6, 2011
What can fiction learn from poetry? Notes on publishing (2)
Today’s headlines, full of outrage over the behavior of tabloids owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, provide an interesting background to continue this reflection on the state of fiction publishing–or, […]
June 24, 2011
What can fiction learn from poetry? Notes on publishing (1)
This week at the KR blog Maggie Smith linked to a piece by Steve Almond on DIY publishing. Almond (as you may know) has published fiction and nonfiction with big […]
June 15, 2011
Most of the page is still blank: An interview with Alex Epstein
Alex Epstein was born in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) and moved to Israel at the age of eight. He is the author of four collections of short stories and three novels […]
June 8, 2011
Interview with Nathalie Handal: Literature and uprising
The fourth in a series of short interviews with writers and translators discussing literature and the Arab Spring. Nathalie Handal is an award-winning poet and playwright. Her most recent collection, […]
June 2, 2011
Interview with Th??r??se Soukar Chehade: Literature and uprising
The third in a series of short interviews with writers and translators discussing literature and the Arab Spring. Th??r??se Soukar Chehade was born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, and immigrated […]
May 24, 2011
Interview with Sinan Antoon: Literature and uprising
The second in a series of short interviews with writers and translators discussing literature and the Arab Spring. Sinan Antoon is an Iraqi-born poet, novelist, and translator. His poems and […]
May 17, 2011
Interview with Philip Metres: Literature and uprising
The first in a series of short interviews with writers and translators discussing literature and the Arab Spring. Philip Metres is the author of, recently, To See the Earth (poetry, […]
May 10, 2011
Trust a publisher
Right now I am reading Filip Marinovich’s And If You Don’t Go Crazy I’ll Meet You Here Tomorrow, which means I get to have moments like this: The only joy […]