From the outside: Doris Lessing!
The Nobel Prize for Literature goes to Doris Lessing, “that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny.” At…
Category Archives: writers
Orhan Pamuk: o happy man
Last year’s Nobel Laureate in Literature, Orhan Pamuk, read in Pittsburgh just as this year’s Nobels began trickling out. “I write because I can only participate in real life by…
A day in George Saundersland
Yesterday Pittsburgh became George Saundersland, with a lunch, a Q&A session, a (rumored) dinner with faculty, and a reading (pictured) at the Frick Fine Arts auditorium. Trust me, that figure…
Mark Z. Danielewski returns to Pittsburgh
Mark Z. Danielewski read from both House of Leaves and his latest, Only Revolutions, at Joseph-Beth Booksellers last night in Pittsburgh. I’d put the crowd at 100+, and every single…
Need an outline?
The legend goes like this: Faulkner outlined his book A Fable on the walls of his office. Apparently, this didn’t fit with his wife’s idea of proper decor; she painted…
Delillopalooza
Did New York Magazine think it was starting a meme when it ranked Delillo works? Well, it’s quacking like a meme. Ed Park picked it up first with his excellent…
Tina Louise and James Ellroy
The green room, LA Times Festival of Books: Nobel prizewinner Eric Kandell wears a red bowtie; Tim Gunn is immaculate in a navy suit. Michael Connoly sits shyly in a…
They go in threes
David Halberstam died yesterday in a California car crash. What with him and Vonnegut going, luminous American writers — particularly those with a skeptical perspective on war — should be…
Smudgy fingers, anyone?
Litbloggers keep cropping up in newspapers. This week: Ed Champion profiles Lionel Shriver for the Chicago Sun-Times and Mark Sarvas makes his NY Times debut with a review of James…
Pittsburgh, city of asylum
Salvadoran Horacio Castellanos Moya has been selected for the two-year City of Asylum residency in Pittsburgh. From the (pdf) press release: Born in 1957, Castellanos Moya is the author of…
