Blog

the black and white cover of "Following Tommy"

Following Tommy

  Following Tommy Bob Hartley Cervena Barva Press, July 2012 104 pages $17.00 I was asked to review “Following Tommy” in part because I’m a Chicagoan. Bob Hartley’s first novel is set in the West side of the Windy City, and if anyone can recognize Chicagoness, tap into that essence and understand an author’s grilling…

the cover of Digital Americana

REDACTED: Experiences with Digital Americana’s Interactive Literary Magazine

  This post was written by John Rodzvilla, Emerson College’s Electronic Publisher-in-Residence. There has always been somewhat of an unrealized promise of interactivity with digital literature. It should be more than an enhanced experience of the print original, but still reflect the intentions of the artists. The Electronic Literature movement has tried to legitimize and…

photo of a Barnes and Noble in Evanston, IL

Literary Boroughs #29: Evanston, IL

The Literary Boroughs series will explore little-known and well-known literary communities across the country and world and show that while literary culture can exist online without regard to geographic location, it also continues to thrive locally. Posts are by no means exhaustive and we encourage our readers to contribute in the comment section. The series will run on our blog…

headshot of the author Gillian Flynn

Seven Chipmunks Twirling on a Branch: An Interview with Gillian Flynn

Gillian Flynn is the author of the New York Times #1 Best-Selling novel Gone Girl as well as Sharp Objects and Dark Places. Gillian is a fan of true crime books and a gold mine of popular culture data. She was over at my house for dinner one night with her husband, not too long ago. (He and my wife…

Cover of "Paternity Test"

Orthodoxy, Humor, and the Bookstore of Your Dreams: An Interview with Michael Lowenthal

To open any of Michael Lowenthal’s novels is to be struck by the visceral power of his images.  From a woman’s “depthless smile” to a man with a belly like a rucksack, from flags snapping in the wind at a WWI parade to a description of an adolescent boy’s braces to a heartbreaking scene of…

photo of a person in a pink button-up shirt at a mic, looking over their shoulder while a crowd sits in folding chairs behind them

Literary Boroughs #28: San Francisco and North Bay (Part Two)

[Read part one of this post here.] Where to get published: Though the writer-to-everyday citizen ratio is kind of out of control in the Bay Area (meaning: heaps of competition for space in local publications), there are still plenty of opportunities for publication in local journals and magazines. McSweeney’s has opportunities to publish both fiction and…

cover of A Many Splendid Thing

THAT LIT, LIT LIFE (with global characteristics) 11 (of 14)

So this past week that lit, lit life took me first to Bangkok and then to Kyoto, two cities where I’m decidedly “foreign” even though I am mistaken for “local.” But first a pause to recall Han Suyin who died at the age of 96. Never heard of her? That’s the problem with “global characteristics”…

photo of the writer Dani Burlison

Literary Boroughs #28: San Francisco and North Bay (Part One)

The Literary Boroughs series will explore little-known and well-known literary communities across the country and world and show that while literary culture can exist online without regard to geographic location, it also continues to thrive locally. Posts are by no means exhaustive and we encourage our readers to contribute in the comment section. The series will run on our blog…