by Nicki Leone
Leroux, having just returned from a long foreign assignment, received a late-night phone call from his editor telling him to hop on the next train to Toulon. Leroux responded with something Gallic and unprintable, slammed down the phone, and decided to become a novelist.
by Lisa Peet
I liked the librarians I worked with. They were a smart, funny, cynical bunch, both erudite and technologically adept. All in all, it looked like a good racket. Publishing was going through a bad patch of simultaneous upheaval and constriction, and as I fired off a series of resumes that spring I began to realize how poorly my odd little niche job had equipped me for the marketplace. I needed a bump.
by Emily St. John Mandel
Lela has drifted very far from the realm of consensual reality, and the book’s considerable tension arises from the question of just how far she will go. She is heartbreaking, because for the moment at least she is lost.
by Vicraj Gill
“This is the strangest thing I know. The more we understand something, the more we know nothing!” Continue reading »
“To say that I had more trouble sleeping while writing the novel is an understatement.” Continue reading »
In part 2 of this audio conversation, Shawn Vestal talks about cross-gender writing, becoming a father in relation to his writing life, and reads from the story “Gulls.” Continue reading »
In an audio conversation, Shawn Vestal talks about faith and and its dark side, family and late-life blooming; and he reads from the collection’s imaginative and poignant opening story. Continue reading »
by Melody Nixon
There is a discomfort in realizing books can still illuminate prejudices you didn’t know you had. Shawn Vestal‘s writing has made it into McSweeney’s, American Short Fiction and Tin House among others – all reliable qualifications – but in his energetic, highly imaginative fiction, Vestal draws heavily on his upbringing in the Mormon faith. Continue reading »
by Juhi Singhal
Whether you are lamenting the burden of—or perhaps grateful for—The Day Job, know that you are in good company. Continue reading »
“I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes.” Continue reading »
