Think back to your time as a 14-year-old. What were you doing with your time? Were you beating Norman Mailer in a national essay contest? A Guide for the Perplexed author Dara Horn was.
“An uncommonly precocious writer.”
Edan, Meet Stephen
Our own Edan Lepucki’s whirlwind tour continues. Her debut novel California landed at number 3 on the Times Bestseller list and she celebrated with a visit to The Colbert Report. There was a bubble wrap drop. New Yorkers can see her tonight at WORD bookstore in Brooklyn and tomorrow at McNally Jackson in Manhattan. See Edan’s events page for the rest of her tour dates.
Lambda Award Winners Announced
The Lambda Literary Award winners were announced, including Under the Udala Tree author Chinelo Okparanta, Dawn Lundy Martin, and Hasan Namir.
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Leave It To TV
Recommended Reading: this piece from Electric Literature on how 80s television broached topics that we’re still afraid to talk about today. Here’s a bonus piece on reality television, as well.
Deal on the Rattling Wall
With past contributions by Joyce Carol Oates, Yusef Komunyakaa and Dana Goodyear, The Rattling Wall (which gets funding from PEN Center USA) appears to have no problem attracting prominent writers. For a limited time, get a three-year subscription at a discount of close to fifty percent.
Tuesday New Release Day: Waldman, Kline
A pair of debuts are making waves this week. Amy Waldman’s The Submission ponders an alternate present in which a Muslim man is the anonymous winner of the search for a design to build the 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero. Ernest Kline’s Player One is a “genre-busting,” pop culture-infused take on the virtual reality future that awaits us.
Company Men
The office novel, by nature, is a tricky construct, if only because your average white-collar job doesn’t offer much in the way of fiction-worthy moments. That said, recent books like Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris demonstrate how fruitful it can be to wring drama out of the rat race. In the latest issue of Dissent, Cubed author Nikil Saval delves into the contradictions of office fiction. FYI, Saval wrote a Year in Reading entry for us.
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Creative Person, Creative Life
“How is the life of a creative person—an artist, a designer, a composer—related to his or her work?” The New Yorker lists 7 archived pieces by way of answer.