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For Part I, see Here. As both a practicing writer and Co-Director of the River Styx at Duff’s Reading Series, I’ve had the opportunity to step to the mic in multiple capacities. The expectations of a reader and a facilitator of readings are very different, but both have the responsibility of engaging the audience on…

I have, for at least the past year, been mildly to massively frustrated by the rise of the word “random” as it’s presently used. This is dull in all sorts of ways—every writer’s got his/her words which frustrate, to say nothing of the nebbishness of even bothering to be pissed at some utterance—but I haven’t…

In the mid-90s, when I was a graduate student at Indiana University and nervously facing my first class of undergraduate creative writing students, I understood within the first couple of weeks that there were few things more fascinating or more daunting for writers than the moment they decide to disrobe their characters and place them…

Not too long ago, I caught a bit of the original Clash of the Titans on TV. It has always been one of my favorite movies: Harry Hamlin’s hair cut, the impressive stop-motion animation, and of course, Zeus commanding Poseidon to “release the Kraken.” The sight of the sea monster awkwardly palming those alcove rocks…

I have, for at least the past year, been mildly to massively frustrated by the rise of the word “random” as it’s presently used. This is dull in all sorts of ways—every writer’s got his/her words which frustrate, to say nothing of the nebbishness of even bothering to be pissed at some utterance—but I haven’t…

Deborah Eisenberg.  Martin Amis.  Steve Almond.  Alice Munro.  Penelope Fitzgerald.  Jim Harrison.  Anne Carson.  W.G. Sebald.  Michael Ondaatje.  John Updike.  These are some of the authors whose books, in recent years, I have all but inhaled, many of them in rapid succession.  As I suspect most book lovers do, I feel a strong, almost filial…

This week’s post was originally going to be about literary reading etiquette, complete with some suggestions for how to behave as a reader before, during, and after an event. But Gabrielle Calvocoressi read as part of the River Styx at Duffs Reading Series here in St. Louis the other night and her reading was so…

I don’t know how much needs to be said or written about Olena Kalytiak Davis: won the 1997 Brittingham Prize, lives in Alaska, post-confessional (blah blah blah), shattered sonnets from Tin House, Best American Poetry selection of “Six Apologies Lord,” etc. She also has some of the best music taste of anyone alive and is…

Last winter I was asked to judge two short-story contests, one for my graduate writing program and the other for a local chapter of a national arts organization.  Not surprisingly, I was flattered and a little excited to have been asked to serve as judge.  What a novelty to be on that side of the…