The winner of this year’s Dzanc Books/Disquiet International Literary Program Award for fiction is Sofi Stambo. Here’s a rather savage piece of hers over at Guernica Magazine.
Steal Like a Gypsy
Shared Terror
“On the level of narrative possibility, I was really drawn to the sense of aloneness that rose from so many of these images—the terrifying possibility of being the last person left on earth, or even the last person left in a neighborhood, a swamp, a freeway. That stark haunting irony of living in a world of excess that has eventually collapsed on itself, emptied out.” Guernica interviews Leslie Jamison and Ryan Spencer for their new collaboration, Such Mean Estate.
A Literary Trip
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Skip The Hangover III. Read A Book Instead.
Sean Manning boldly declares Vegas: A Memoir of a Dark Season — John Gregory Dunne’s first novel — to be “the best book about Sin City ever written.” And yes, he knows what you’re thinking. He really does think it’s better than Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
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The Great American Male Novel
The New York Times recently asked Jennifer Szalai and Mohsin Hamid why there isn't a Great American Novel written by a woman? Both writers concluded that there is no such thing as the Great American Novel. "But if the idea of the Great American Novel is blinding us to exquisite fiction written by women, then perhaps its harm is exceeding its usefulness," Hamid wrote. We think that's a bit of a cop out. But a few women showed up on our list of the Greatest American Novels.
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An Orphaned Bear
"He sat on a shelf of our one-roomed apartment for a while, and then one day when I was sitting in front of my typewriter staring at a blank sheet of paper wondering what to write, I idly tapped out the words 'Mr. and Mrs. Brown first met Paddington on a railway platform. In fact, that was how he came to have such an unusual name for a bear, for Paddington was the name of the station.' It was a simple act, and in terms of deathless prose, not exactly earth shattering, but it was to change my life considerably. ... Without intending it, I had become a children's author." Michael Bond, creator of the Paddington Bear series, has died at 91, reports NPR. We'd like to think that Bond might have appreciated our own Jacob Lambert's series, "Are Picture Books Leading Children Astray?" – in particular this entry questioning the moral fiber of We’re Going on a Bear Hunt.