I recently had the pleasure of judging the Press 53 novella contest, and they've now posted the results. The editors there, Sheryl Monks and Kevin Watson, narrowed my pool down to ten finalists, which they then forwarded on to me. I read them blind, which added a useful frisson and a necessary ignorance to the exercise, but it's fun, now, to see the names of actual people attached to the manuscripts I read.
And I'm here to report that the wonderful thing happened as I worked through those manuscripts, the thing you always hope for but know not to count on: the group of finalists was very solid, with a clean sub-group of Honorable Mentions rising above, and one novella in particular that was absolutely transcendent--so good that I couldn't believe it wasn't already a book. Congratulations, then, to everyone involved in the contest, and most especially to the winner, Joan Corwin of Evanston, Illinois, whose "Safe Shall Be My Going" is a beautiful novella, and whose name, I suspect, we will be seeing often in the future.
May 12, 2008, 10:13 a.m.Category: Novellas
A very fun radio interview to start things off here in Champaign-Urbana, with David Inge of Will Focus 580 AM. You know the cough button that mutes your mike for as long as you press it down? For reasons I would be hard-pressed to explain, I love that button.
November 5, 2007, 12:37 p.m.Categories: China, Fiction Collections, History, Novellas
Columnist, writer, poet, friend and fellow McSweeney's dispatcher John Griswold on the mound. Me at the plate. Here comes the heat.
October 10, 2007, 6:35 p.m.Categories: China, Fiction Collections, Food, History, Interviews, Novellas
A very fun interview just went up here, courtesy of Claire Zulkey. She let me talk about kids' books, Very Bad Poems, and dark chocolate. That's just win-win-win right there.
September 1, 2007, 10:08 p.m.Categories: China, Fiction Collections, Interviews, Novellas
The new iteration of Nothing in the World is now available for pre-order at Dzanc. We're still tweaking the cover but it's well along already: more fantastic work by Steven Seighman. I cannot tell you how pleased I am that this book is getting a second chance at life.
July 20, 2007, 11:54 p.m.Category: Novellas
Terrific news: Dzanc Books, the publisher of my upcoming collection of short stories, has taken on the re-issue of Nothing in the World as well. I simply couldn't be more pleased. It's part of a deal through which Dzanc will do my next two books as well, a novel for 2009 and another collection for 2010. Exactly what I've been hoping for ever since Bullfight Media went under. Marvelous, marvelous.
June 11, 2007, 12:45 p.m.Category: Novellas
A kind and thorough review of Nothing in the World is now out and about in the latest issue (Vol. 19, No. 45 Fall/Winter 2006--scroll down to the fourth review) of Other Voices, thanks to Kelly Zavala.
I wish I could tell you that I was punk rock. I wish I could tell you I wore the right boots and shaved my head with the right razor and knew all the lyrics. Sadly, I cannot in clear conscience tell you this. The good news is they let me go to their concerts anyway, and Punk Planet even let Elizabeth Crane interview me, which was excellent fun.
(Damn. See what I mean? If you use phrases like 'excellent fun,' you cannot be punk rock no matter how bad you want it.)
November 24, 2006, 4:39 p.m.Categories: Interviews, Novellas, Short Stories
Daniel Olivas' hugely kind review of Nothing in the World just showed up in today's issue of the El Paso Times--a nice pick-me-up on a gray day here in Beijing.
Brian Kornell shoots from the hip, and I answer, also from the hip.
September 22, 2006, 12:33 p.m.Categories: Interviews, Novellas, Travel
