September 2011
You are browsing the archive for September 2011.
Books by Gordon Mennenga’s Bed
Gordy reports, “Here’s what I’m reading:” Good Benito by Alan Lightman The Truth About Celia by Kevin Brockmeier The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta and finally a book I read every year, The Dog of the South by Charles Portis.
Press-Citizen Review
Iowa City reviewer Jeff Charis-Carlson writes of We Wanted to Be Writers, “Olsen and Schaeffer have presented a welcome, controversial addition to the collection of books on the Workshop . . . ” Read the rest of his review.
We’re Streaming Live!
How cool is that? Or, as Bill Manhire so eloquently put it, “Eric Olsen live streamed—all that 1950s science fiction is coming true.” Eric, Glenn, and Gordy Mennenga are reading from We Wanted to Be Writers tonight at 7 pm Central Time in Iowa City as part of the internationally known “Live from Prairie Lights” reading series. [...]
2011 National Book Festival
Two links to cool stuff: 1. Excerpts from interviews of writers at the September 24 – 25 National Book Festival on the National Mall 2. Other stuff about the festival, including a video of Clint Eastwood in the Library of Congress Plus the warm fuzzies you’ll get from realizing READING and WRITING are still important [...]
Books by Karin Evans’ Bed
Karin Evans is the author of The Lost Daughters of China, The Grace to Race, and the forthcoming We’re All Walking Home in the Dark. I always have a stack teetering beside my bed, dipping into it depending on mood and what’s reachable. Just now I’m most deeply into The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two [...]
More Good News About the Book
Hard not to blush with all the attention, but some news is simply too good to keep to ourselves. Here’s the latest buzz about We Wanted to Be Writers. “. . . the best real-life writing advice available in print today” — on Twitter from [...]
Rosebud Review
Favorite line from the Rosebud Book Reviews piece on We Wanted to Be Writers? “More than learning something you will find yourself in good company and part of the best discussion about writing you’ve ever had” (ok, emphasis ours, for obvious reasons).
Raymond Carver Anecdote
Surprise Ending By Dick Cummins Dick Cummins is a 1970 graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and frequent contributor to the We Wanted to Be Writers blog. In 1988 I was still struggling to get back on my financial feet from when my ed software company (Writing Software International, Inc. yet) went under. One of [...]
Books by Eric Olsen’s Bed
Eric says first, let me admit that one of the books by my bed has been there for more than a year. Indeed, I think I mentioned it months ago in my last update for Books by the Bed. It’s The War of the World by Niall Ferguson. The subtitle is “Twentieth-Century Conflict and the [...]
Why Readings Are Important
Not all great audiences are in bookstores and auditoria. But wherever they are and whatever their composition, they can play a critical role in writers’ confidence and connection with their readers. Eric‘s piece on our recent gig at Vroman’s Bookstore is a guest post on Protagonize, a great big friendly collaborative creative writing community. Plus, [...]
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