Least Appealing Summer Residencies

The Listeners Leni Zumas Tin House Books, May 2012 $15.95 352 pages Perhaps a lesser-known corollary to the Chekhov’s gun principle is this:  if there is an octopus on the cover of the book, it had better shoot ink by novel’s end.  In Leni Zumas’ The Listeners, however, it’s not ink that’s spilled, but blood,…

Guest post by Carol Keeley Garrison Keillor kicked the beehive with his recent death-of-publishing op-ed. The reaction was vigorously optimistic, with a little messenger-mocking. The backdrop to this volley was BookExpo America, widely described as funereal. As usual, I agree with everyone. Keillor is right that the era of publishing he grew up with is…

Matt Bell is an editor at Dzanc Books, where his duties include running the literary magazine The Collagist. He’s the author of How They Were Found (2010) and Cataclysm Baby (2012), as well as three chapbooks, Wolf Parts, The Collectors, and How the Broken Lead the Blind. This fall he will be teaching writing at…