May 2012
You are browsing the archive for May 2012.
On Becoming a Writer
If this isn’t a graduation speech for an MFA program, it should be. Or, no . . . it should be required reading long before wannabe writers get that far. In this post from The Chronicle of Higher Education, Randall Silvis nails the prerequisites with humor and tough truth. Anything you’d add to his 10 [...]
On Memorial Day
My Father, Toilet Paper, and Italian Opera By Eric Olsen This piece was originally posted at this time last year, to enthusiastic response. Some of my earliest memories concern my father neatly folding toilet paper and tucking it into his shirt pocket before leaving the house. Also my father now and then breaking spontaneously into Italian, [...]
Books by Lee Camp’s Bed
Lee is a comic/political activist/author. He is perhaps best known for two things: his early support of the Occupy movement (he performed at more than a dozen protests in the U.S. and Canada) and his appearance on Fox News, where he went off script during a live broadcast. He has just turned his popular Moment of Clarity web series into a [...]
The Importance of a Writing Community
Bright Ideas Redux By Eric Olsen Writing may be a solitary gig, but making it good and making it count shouldn’t be. This post on the perks of writing peeps was a recent featured blog on Red Room.
Books by David Davis’ Bed
David Davis is the author of Showdown at Shepherd’s Bush: The 1908 Olympic Marathon and the Three Runners Who Started a Running Craze and Marathon Crasher: The Life and Times of Merry Lepper, The First American Woman to Run a Marathon. I’ve stopped buying books. Please don’t hold that against me. My partner was [...]
A Fred Setterberg Reading
Fred in the Flesh By Cheryl Olsen When virtual and veritable collide, the result is frequently disappointing—both in combination and upon reflection. But when the virtual @FredSetterberg morphed into the real author of Lunch Bucket Paradise for a reading at a library in Alameda, across the Bay from San Francisco, not far from the setting [...]
Books by Brian Meeks’ Bed
Brian D. Meeks is the author of Two Decades and Counting: The Streak, The Wins, The Hawkeyes: Thru the Eyes of Roy Marble, about their ‘86-‘87 team that went 30-5. He mostly writes fiction, though. His first book in the Henry Wood Detective Agency series, came out last year and has sold very well to the [...]
At Home with John Irving
No doubt there will be miles of video footage of John Irving now that his 13th novel is out, but this intimate look at a writer in his lair will surely be among the best. Photographer and videographer Shaul Schwarz knows how to wield a cam.
Review of In One Person
Last month the inimitable Harvey Freedenberg shared the books by his bed. Now the National Book Critics Circle member has reviewed We Wanted to Be Writers contributor John Irving‘s new novel, In one Person. “This is Irving’s most political novel since The Cider House Rules,” Harvey says, adding “but an air of sadness, not anger [...]
Books by Lynne Perednia’s Bed
Lynne Perednia is sysop and book reviewer at CompuServe Books & Writers Community, the oldest continually operating book forum on the net, and a middle school librarian in a Title I school. Her book reviews are archived at Lynne’s Book Notes, and she writes a weekly column on Contemporary Fiction Views at a well-known political [...]
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