Page-Turner interviewed Dinaw Mengestu, who has a story in the latest issue of the New Yorker (paywall), and whose forthcoming book All Our Names was highlighted by yours truly in our Great Book Preview.
“I see their politics as a response to a challenge they both face”
Try Finding a Picture
Here’s an odd scenario straight out of a Thomas Pynchon plotline: in the course of fact-checking a review of Pynchon’s new novel, Alex Yuhas found himself emailing a person known only as “The Great Quail.”
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I Is for Impressive
“It all started with A Is For Alibi, then came B Is For Burglar, C Is For Corpse and on and on through the alphabet.” NPR interviews Sue Grafton about her Kinsey Millhone series, currently spanning 25 letters – the newest and penultimate entry, Y for Yesterday, comes out today – and 35 years. Pair with Ujala Sehgal‘s list of five crime novels where women are the true detectives.
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Writerly Advice
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Geoff Dyer on Pagetti’s Syria
The devastating images of Syria shot by Franco Pagetti have been collected into a series entitled Veiled Aleppo. Over at The New Republic, Geoff Dyer writes about one of them. It’s an image, Dyer observes, that features “symbols … of the death throes not of a city but of film.”
A Poor Man’s Jaron Lanier?
I recently sat down for a long and wide-ranging interview with The Faster Times. Topics covered include technology, Taco Bell, technology, Richard Yates, technology, Friday Night Lights, and…er…Internet self-promotion.
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Dispatches from Down Under
“With each step, I had to remind myself to touch pavement again, as if in a moment’s forgetfulness I might slip the earth’s magnetic pull and go pinwheeling over Sydney Harbor and out to sea,” our own Michael Bourne writes in his Dispatches column at The Common, “Stanley Street.”
Weird: France & Belgium
Recommended recommendations: Weird Fiction Review has compiled a list of notable “weird” French and Belgian writers.
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Quick Links
What happens when you co-write a book with someone who’s illiterate? YPTR has the details.LitLinks, a well stocked collection of links about a few hundred notable authors.iPoems arrives promising a plethora of downloadable poetry so you can jam to some verse on your iPod.