Category Archives: writers

It’s practically snowing authors

me, in the snow. It was time for a picture. Winter weather continues. Tonight Sasha Frere-Jones is going to be at Carnegie Mellon (cool!), but if things get horribly sleety…

Returning to Raymond Carver

Recently The New Yorker ran a piece on Raymond Carver and his relationship with editor Gordon Lish. A few things about the piece made me uncomfortable, including its lack of…

The New Yorker & Raymond Carver

Raymond Carver is perhaps the most esteemed short story writer of the latter half of the 20th century. His biography is well-known — an early marriage; a period of dissolution,…

I’m just gonna have to drink this mugful of bourbon myself

Since Norman Mailer done gone and died on me. He was a misogynist. He was a short, egomaniacal fuck. He was a pain in the ass, full of himself, guilty…

O’Nan and Pancake and Lee, oh my

Monday: Stewart O’Nan reads in the evening at Pitt, in the 5th floor room where we have workshop, featuring arching gothic windows and the occasional wintry breeze. Afterwards a few…

Just when you say the name Stewart O’Nan

The man shows up and starts reading. At least that’s how it worked on Monday, when I blogged that he was coming and then he appeared later that night. O’Nan,…

Dave Eggers returns to Pittsburgh

Dave Eggers returns to Pittsburgh with Valentino Achak Deng. They focused on What is the What, Valentino’s story, and showed slides and video from a trip they took to southern…

Never too late

La Bloga gets with Junot Diaz, on The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, 10 years in the writing: Books are not people. They are never late to the party….

Mailer, you old bastard, I’ve got a mug of bourbon waiting for you

Flush with his incandescence, happy in all the anticipation of liberty which this Gotterdammerung of a urination was soon to provide, Mailer did not know, but he had already and…

best and new

Congrats to Jedediah Berry, one of the accomplices in the legendary AWP bad fashion photo series (Jed’s NOT the guy in the leather duster); his story “Inheritance” is in the…