Book Review
Review of The Days Are Gods
Home Is Where Your Words Take You—and Keep Taking You By Geri Lipschultz With her own twist, Liz Stephens joins fellow writers Terry Tempest Williams and Cheryl Strayed on the trail of women writing the American West. In this fine debut memoir—wrought in language that is witty, melodic, and wise—Stephens insinuates herself among the landscape [...]
Excerpt from David Corbett’s New Book
The Curious Gift of Heartbreak Reprinted by arrangement with Penguin Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., from THE ART OF CHARACTER by David Corbett. Copyright (c) 2013 by David Corbett. David Corbett is the New York Times Notable Author of four novels, dozens of stories, numerous scripts, and too many poems. Recovering Catholic, ex-PI, one-time [...]
Review of WW2BW
Fred Setterberg, rock star author of “true-novel” Lunch Bucket Paradise (see our 5/2012 post) magnanimously and thoroughly reviewed We Wanted to Be Writers for literary blog Talking Writing. Our favorite line—among countless worthies: “By opting for the long view, covering the inceptive motives and misgivings of thirty writers and teachers—the celebrated and the obscure—We Wanted to Be [...]
Review of Have You Seen Marie?
Feeling Presence Rather than Absence By Cheryl Olsen I first learned of this miraculous balm of a book last January when Sandra Cisneros sent it to me after my mother died. She asked me not to copy it or send it to anyone lest she get in trouble with her publisher. It came in the [...]
Bukoski Reviews Short Fiction Collection
In his latest review for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Anthony Bukoski takes on The Law of Miracles by Gregory Blake Smith. Tony says Smith is an Iowa Workshop alumnus, “and one of the stories concerns a fictitious Workshop poet, Ichabod Sick.” Spoiler alert: Tony also says that story is Smith’s one misstep, but that’s all you’re gonna [...]
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 [...]
Review of Who Will Hear Your Secrets?
Who better to review Robley Wilson’s short story collection than master of the form Anthony Bukoski? Here’s the review from yesterday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune.
The Writer/Reviewer Collaboration
Should a Writer Reply to a Bad Review? By Eric Olsen Continued from The Writer/Editor Collaboration. I figured from the title of Arthur Krystal’s piece, “Should Writers Reply to Reviews?” that he was going to discuss Helen Vendler’s delightfully nasty review of The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry, edited and with an intro by our [...]
Review of Lunch Bucket Paradise
In the wonderful way of the World Wide Web, a perfect storm of circumstances led inevitably to this post. We first met Fred Setterberg on Twitter, which led us to his website, which led to discovering his latest book, Lunch Bucket Paradise: A True Life Novel. That in turn led to us inviting him to submit [...]
William Landay Interview
Secret reading vices have a way of sneaking out of the closet, hitting critical mass, and propelling their authors to the upper echelons of bestseller lists. Diane Prokop has a way of helping the process with singular interview questions that demand thoughtful answers. We know many of you have dogeared stacks of crime novels behind [...]
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