A little music in honor of St. Paddy’s Day. As I wrote in an essay for Cordella recently, I fell in love with traditional Irish music as a struggling teenager, when a wonderful teacher introduced me to it. This music felt visceral and wild as any Nirvana bootleg and put an ecstatic hum alongside my heartaches. …
I have observed: The raising of both novels and toddlers involves urgency and mess. Both yell cryptic phrases at you, which they expect you to decipher and translate to the rest of the world. Both involve days of difficult, unpaid work that is, for years, invisible to the rest of the world. Also: Both will …
Excerpts from my review of Alice Mattison’s new novel Conscience, just published in Consequence Magazine. Consider: A man sets his baby on the sidewalk, walks a short distance away, and sets himself on fire. Does the fact that he’s brought his child to his self-immolation prove he is out of his mind? Or is he …
My essay “How to Survive the Apocalypse” is out today in the print issue of Image Journal. It’s a fun/serious look at apocalyptic fiction. (Literary fiction. Not the Left Behind series.) Specifically: the excellent novels The Pinch by Steve Stern (Graywolf Press) This Is Why I Came by Mary Rakow (Counterpoint Press), and When the English Fall by David Williams (Algonquin Books). And from …
Given the legions (10,000? 15,000?) who attend the annual AWP conference (Association of Writers & Writing Programs), it should feel like a faceless sea. So how is it that, for every hour I spend there, I run into somebody I know? I’m not even especially well connected. I’m a very wee creature in the AWP zoo. …
This week in The Common I reviewed a fabulously weird debut short story collection called Valparaiso, Round the Horn, by Madeline ffitch. And when a book is this rich in playful detail, it’s really challenging to choose just one title for your blog post. Rejected titles: Burning Your Grandfather’s Body × Feral Pigs and You × …
“Rule #11: I know that these rules will inevitably result in contradictions, conflicts, hypocrisy, and stress rashes.” —Sherman Alexie Yesterday Sherman Alexie wrote a marvelous response to a controversy about one of the poems he chose for Best American Poetry 2015–a poem ostensibly written by a Chinese poet, who turned out to be …