Read This: Inside and Signs and Wonders
Emma Dodge Hanson In the summer of 2007, Alix Ohlin wrote a “Selling Shorts” essay for Beatrice, which I mention up front as an acknowledgment that I have subjective reasons for being predisposed to...
View ArticleJulie Choffel, “Cardinal Sketch”
Stevan Alcala Rough and literate, your bits made a cheery piece: to try windows / to grate one’s teeth. Keep placidly along the lines of droll translation. Not merely a hat of polite passage, but a...
View ArticleLillian Ann Slugocki: The Mythic Arc of The Blue Hours
I met Lillian Ann Slugocki in 2001, shortly after she and Erin Cressida Wilson had published The Erotica Project, a series of monologues that they’d co-written for various theatrical and print formats....
View ArticleRead This: The Dog Stars
photo: Tory Read Earlier this summer, I began writing the occasional book review for the Dallas Morning News; my first article was about David Dufty’s How to Build an Android, an account of a...
View ArticleLife Stories #13: Steven Rinella
photo: TheMeatEater.com My guest for this episode of Life Stories, a series of podcast interviews with memoir writers about their lives and the art of writing memoir, is Steven Rinella, and we’re...
View ArticleBeing a Book Critic Is Nothing Special
Since I first wrote about the call for less niceness in literary criticism, there have been a few more rounds in the argument, most noticeably after a particularly nasty review of Alix Ohlin’s most...
View ArticleLife Stories #14: Anthony Swofford
Christa Parravani In this episode of Life Stories, a series of podcast interviews with memoir writers about their lives and the art of writing memoir, I’m talking with Anthony Swofford about Hotels,...
View ArticleLetter to a Young Book Blogger
(h/t Michelle Dean for coming up with the title) What is the mission of the book blogger? Wow, that’s a fairly pretentious question, even for an imaginary interlocutor. I didn’t even know I was...
View ArticleLife Stories #15: Gideon Lewis-Kraus
photo: Rose Lichter Marck For this episode of Life Stories, a series of podcast interviews with memoir writers about their lives and the art of writing memoir, I met up with Gideon Lewis-Kraus to...
View ArticleHampton Fancher Returns to “The South”
photo: Mario Grigorov There’s a line in one of Hampton Fancher’s short stories where he mentions the surrealist painter Giorgio di Chirico, and though it’s not meant to be a summation of The Shape of...
View ArticleRead This: The Graphic Canon
Rick Geary Seven Stories Press and editor Russ Kick have recently undertaken a multi-volume project called The Graphic Canon, aiming to present a wide sampling of the most recognized titles in world...
View ArticleDon Bajema Slips Back into the Twilight Zone
photo courtesy City Lights When I received Don Bajema’s collected short stories, Winged Shoes and a Shield, I knew I wanted to have him as a guest author here at Beatrice. Usually, for short story...
View ArticlePeter Geye Builds a Patio
Photo: Jeff Fifield The Lighthouse Road, the second novel by Peter Geye, opens strong, with a woman making her way through a late 19th-century blizzard to give birth to her son, then jumps forward...
View ArticleThink Before You Answer Your Critics
I recently attended a conference that Digital Book World put on about “discoverability and marketing” for the publishing industry, where one of the speakers was novelist Elle Lothlorien, who was there...
View ArticleCome Meet Me in Nashville (or New Jersey)
On Sunday, October 14, I’ll be moderating a panel at this year’s Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, Tennessee. I’m looking forward to chatting with novelists Julianna Baggott and Michael Knight,...
View ArticleNed Vizzini on Discovering Role-Playing Games at 28
photo: Sabra Embury Well, this guest essay takes me back; when I was in junior high school, I was into the idea of Dungeons & Dragons, but I didn’t know anybody else who was, so although I had a...
View ArticleSusan Richards Shreve & The ’70s from Here
photo: David Carmack The material that got sent along with my copy of Susan Richards Shreve’s new novel, You Are the Love of My Life, mentions that the story is “inspired by Shreve’s personal...
View ArticleLife Stories #16: Alex Witchel & Will Schwalbe
photos: Fred R. Conrad (Witchel), Michael Lionstar (Schwalbe) In this episode of Life Stories, a series of podcast interviews with memoir writers about their lives and the art of writing memoir, I met...
View ArticleRead This: Sumo
Thien Pham Back in 2011, when I reviewed Level Up for Tor.com, I made a note to keep an eye on Thien Pham; after the fantastic job he’d done illustrating Gene Luen Yang’s story, I was eager to see...
View ArticleLife Stories #17: Susannah Cahalan
photo: Julie Stapen In this episode of Life Stories, the podcast where I chat with memoir writers about their lives and about the art of writing memoir, my guest is Susannah Cahalan, and her book is...
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