October 29, 2009 at 3:59 pm (short fiction)
Tags: Literary Journals & Websites, novels, NYTBR, reading, short fiction
Halloween falls on a Saturday this year, which means the weekend will be very fun. Fun, fun, fun, fun.
It is chilly in the house. In the interests of conserving energy, we keep the thermostat down. Self walks around all the time in sweats, scarf, and furry socks.
Son took his GRE yesterday: apparently, now you can see how you scored, immediately after, and he got 1400. Happy happy joy joy! Self has no idea where son plans to apply to grad school, hubby hopes Stanford but self thinks it isn’t the school for him. She hopes University of Washington, as Seattle is a very cool city.
Story of the day is from One Story, lit mag which self realized (in a flash of insight, earlier this month) would never publish her. The story is called “Stag.” Once again it is set in some lonely Midwestern locale, where men are all like Cormac McCarthy protagonists. Setting very bleak, very rife with anomie, and that unique American angst.
Though it is cold outside, self will walk the li’l crits. In addition, she will see if she can find the following two books in the local Barnes & Noble:
- Helen Oyeyemi’s first novel, The Icarus Girl: According to the New York Times Book Review, this is about “the troubled daughter of a Nigerian mother and an English father . . . who develops a malevolent imaginary friend.” (Yes!)
- Chieh Chieng’s first novel, A Long Stay in a Distant Land which is described by NYTBR as “a generous family saga about an unlucky Cantonese-American clan from Orange County, Calif.”
Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.
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October 22, 2009 at 4:41 pm (Books, Quotes, Writers and Others, short fiction)
Tags: announcements, biographies, lists, reviews, short fiction, Women's Review of Books
Self’s review of Perfect Hostage, the Justin Wintle biography of Aung San Suu Kyi, is forthcoming from the Women’s Review of Books in the November/December issue.
Among the highlights of the current issue (September/October 2009) are:
“Anomie in the New China,” Xujun Eberlein’s review of Leslie T. Chang’s Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China
In an intimate, nonjudgmental voice, Leslie T. Chang’s refreshingly rendered Factory Girls opens up the fascinating and gritty world of female migrant workers. While many of the young women find economic improvement, their rudderless lives raise the question of whether this new migration is a progression or regression in Chinese women’s emancipation.
“Sticky Tables,” Rebecca Meacham’s review of Antonya Nelson’s latest story collection, Nothing Right: Short Stories
My introduction to Antonya Nelson’s fiction began with shooting dogs. Specifically, it began with one dog, a fictional pet in a short story I was revising during graduate school. As a writer, I was itching to try something stark and violent. In my story, a suburban couple required an irrevocable act to divide them. My new ending seemed perfect: in the last scene, for various reasons, the husband would shoot his wife’s dog.
Also featured:
- “Woman of Valor,” Sherrilyn A. Ifill’s review of Mia Bay’s To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells; and Paula Giddings’ Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching
- “Girl Delinquents,” Miroslava Chavez-Garcia’s review of Catherine S. Ramirez’s The Woman in the Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory
- “Whose Culture Is It, Anyway?” Martha Nichols’ review of Heather Jacobson’s Culture Keeping: White Mothers, International Adoption, and the Negotiation of Family Difference
Participate in the on-line discussion about these articles on the Review’s new web-blog, Women=Books.
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October 13, 2009 at 7:04 pm (Opportunities, Other Sites of Interest, Sayings, Surprises, Writing, short fiction)
Tags: contests, first times, literary awards, Literary Journals & Websites
Yesterday was quite an amazing day as self got the absolutely amazing news that a story of hers was a finalist in a flash fiction contest. Self’s been trying for years to get into this journal, with no luck. And now she’s a finalist?
The prize was $500.
Unfortunately or perhaps just unluckily, the story was “Appetites,” which is in the current issue (# 31) of cool website Cafe Irreal.
Alas! She had so little faith in her chances (or is perhaps too much a creature of impulse) that, yes indeed, amazing as it may seem, she submitted the exact same piece to the contest and to Cafe Irreal, which published it. (Then again, dear blog readers, what are the odds? Of you becoming a finalist in a contest? Given the fact that there are hundreds of writers equally or perhaps more talented than you, all of them also submitting to contests? Isn’t becoming a contest finalist then akin to the rich man going through the eye of a needle, or whatever analogy the Bible used to illustrate the difficulty of getting into heaven?)
Self had to withdraw from the contest, today.
Here are a couple of thoughts that presented to self:
There is always a first time for everything. So now self has the unique honor of knowing how it feels to have to excuse herself from a contest in which she has become (quite improbably) a finalist.
Also: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? Hopefully?
Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.
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September 20, 2009 at 8:46 pm (Books, Insomnia, short fiction)
Tags: book lists, E. L. Doctorow, non-fiction, novels, NYTBR, reviews, sci-fi, short fiction
Self had another awful bout of insomnia last night. She told herself she would not allow herself to read any more of the Alice Munro collection after a certain time of night, because then she’ll want to stay up reading, so enthralling are the stories (Runaway). But it didn’t work last night. In the wee hours of the morning, self was still wide awake, the only difference from nights previous was that she was now reading The New York Times Book Review of 13 September 2009. So, here are the books self thought she’d be interested in reading, in the wee hours of this morning:
1. After reading Liesl Schillinger’s review of a new novel by E. L. Doctorow, Homer & Langley:
E. L. Doctorow’s Homer & Langley
2. After reading Dexter Filkin’s review of Jon Krakauer’s Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman:
Jon Krakauer’s Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman
3. After reading Lisa Scottoline’s review of Ethan Brown’s Shake the Devil Off: A True Story of the Murder That Rocked New Orleans:
Ethan Brown’s Shake the Devil Off: A True Story of the Murder That Rocked New Orleans
4. After reading Louisa Gilder’s review of Graham Farmelo’s The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom:
Graham Farmelo’s The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom
5. After reading Andrew Ervin’s review of Nigeria-born fiction writer Helen Oyeyemi’s third novel, White is for Witching:
Helen Oyeyemi’s White is for Witching
6. After reading Caryn James’ review of Philippe Claudel’s latest novel, Brodeck (translated from the French by John Cullen):
Philippe Claudel’s Brodeck, translated from the French by John Cullen
7. After reading William Giraldi’s review of Terrence Holt’s first story collection, In the Valley of the Kings:
Terrence Holt’s In the Valley of the Kings
8. After reading Jonathan Lethem’s end-paper essay, “Poet of Desolate Landscapes,” about the stories of J. G. Ballard:
The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard
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September 3, 2009 at 1:16 am (Quotes, Writing, short fiction)
Tags: Filipino writers, Literary Journals & Websites, short fiction, writing process
. . . while she was at the Writing Center (There were students! Hallelujah!). She was reading a short story about people who work at a garbage dump, who make a horrific discovery and — whoa! Self! Stop right there! Have you forgotten, it is almost time for dinner ???
Well, the point is:
Self also has a severed hand story!!!
Apologies if this is just too much for you, dear blog reader. Self really really likes this story, it had its genesis in an on-line writers group that Read the rest of this entry »
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August 31, 2009 at 8:00 am (Insomnia, Surprises, Writing, short fiction)
Tags: announcements, Just published, Literary Journals & Websites, Poets & Writers
So, it’s past midnight. Almost 1 a.m., in fact. And as usual self finds herself still awake and staring up at the ceiling (Please God, don’t let her go the Michael Jackson or Heath Ledger route — you saw where their insomnia got them? Self, don’t be silly! Even if you wanted to, you wouldn’t be able to afford all those prescription drugs!)
She decides to browse through a Poets & Writers. Lo and behold, almost in the exact middle of the magazine is an ad for Hotel Amerika’s TransGenre Issue, Spring 2009.
Self has a piece appearing in this issue. It is called Read the rest of this entry »
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August 30, 2009 at 8:02 am (Books, Philippine History, Places, Quotes, short fiction)
Tags: Filipino authors, memories, short story
The building was old. How old exactly, no one was certain. The records of the construction were lost in the great fire that struck Manila in 1915. Judging from the style of its architecture and its ancient, weather-beaten look, however, it had been built at the turn of the century.
This was the building that housed the National Archives. The shelves were full of dusty, yellowing documents from Spanish times, newspapers with courageous names like La Independencia and La Solidaridad, and books on history and geography compiled by the Spanish friars. No one had looked at the books for a very long time. They were piled together in haphazard fashion on the shelves. The pages were coming loose from the bindings. The newspapers were slowly crumbling to pieces. Perhaps the past was not very important, or perhaps no one wanted to remember that before the New Society of the dictator Roberto Suarez Gomez, there had been such a thing as an intellectual life in the country. At any rate, the building’s long, narrow corridors were empty. Nothing disturbed the shafts of sunlight slanting quietly through the high windows.
— From self’s first book, Ginseng and Other Tales From Manila (Calyx Books, Corvallis, Oregon). Also published in the Philippines by the Ateneo University Office of Research & Publications
NOTE: Self’s great-grandfather, his brother, and Antonio Luna were among the earliest editorial staff of the real La Solidaridad. The first name of the paper was “La Patria,” but the new American occupiers found it too incendiary a title. So they changed the name to La Independencia and published it in Malabon, which at the time (1898) was beyond the Americans’ jurisdiction. The maiden issue ran on Sept. 3, 1898.
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August 27, 2009 at 10:02 pm (Eavesdropping, Quotes, short fiction)
Tags: short story, Stephen King
. . . which self bought for her reading pleasure on the way home from New York at end of June.
She did not pick this magazine out of the magazine rack simply because she was so smart, but because she noticed a fellow traveler holding a copy and, after perusing the T of contents (Tyler Cabot’s “Stories My Father Told Me,” Charles P. Pierce’s “What If Obama’s Out of His Mind?” among others), decided that it looked like pretty good reading.
So, the featured story is by Stephen King. And it is about a hapless writer (Stories about writers are the best kind of stories!) who has wrung eighty pages “out of his old and limping Dell laptop.” And he thinks he might screw up his courage and show the pages to an agent. Which he does. And the agent tells him, why Read the rest of this entry »
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August 13, 2009 at 4:11 pm (Quotes, short fiction)
Tags: Filipino authors, reading, short story, The Philippines
Self has finished reading Greg Brillantes’ “Faith, Love, Time and Dr. Lazaro.”
In the passage below, the doctor returns from a late night visit to a poor man’s hut, where he has been unable to save the man’s sick child:
Dr. Lazaro felt the oppression of the night begin to lift from him; an emotionless calm returned to his mind. The sparrow does not fall without the Father’s leave, he mused at the sky, but it falls just the same. But to what end are the sufferings of a child? The crickets chirped peacefully in the moon-pale darkness beneath the trees.
“You baptized the child, didn’t you, Ben?”
“Yes, Pa.” The boy kept in step beside him.
He used to believe in it too, the power of the Holy Spirit washing away original sin, the purified soul made heir of heaven. He could still remember fragments of his boyhood faith, as one might remember an improbable and long-discarded dream.
This story is so suffused with melancholy, dear blog readers. Which is perhaps why self loves it so much.
Stay tuned.
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August 11, 2009 at 6:38 pm (Dogs, Food and Drink, Publishers, Writing, short fiction)
Tags: documentaries, indecision, lists, Literary Journals & Websites, pets, short fiction
Dog Food:
- Pedigree senior dog food, on sale at Safeway for $13.99 for a 15.7-lb. bag?
- Or R/D vet-recommended prescription dog food, $44.99 for a 30-lb. bag?
Manila:
- Stay two weeks, as close to Thanksgiving as possible?
- Stay two weeks, as close to Christmas as possible? (There is no question of actually staying to Christmas, since hubby and son will be back in Redwood City)
How To Spend $7
- Watching dolphin documentary “The Cove” at Menlo Park Guild?
- Or mailing out a couple of Read the rest of this entry »
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