Born in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, Canada, in 1934, Mark Strand spent much of his childhood in Halifax, Montreal, New York, Philadelphia, and Cleveland. As a teenager he lived in Columbia, Peru, and Mexico. Upon graduating from Antioch College, he went to Yale to study painting with Joseph Albers. Turning from painting to poetry “wasn’t…
In one of his essays, Gary Soto writes that as a child, he had imagined he would “marry Mexican poor, work Mexican hours, and in the end die a Mexican death, broke and in despair.” The statement might seem surprising, coming as it does from such a well-established writer. Considered one of the best Chicano…
Myth has it that Ann Beattie published her first short story in The New Yorker when she was twenty-five years old,signed a first-read contract with them, and thereafter made five to seven annual appearances in the venerable magazine — with stories she would write in one sitting, in one afternoon. As myths go, this one…
James Welch refers to himself as an Indian — not a Native American, not an American Indian — and he is often amused that, while the simple ethnic designation is used as a matter of course on reservations, it causes a furor on university campuses. Part Blackfeet, part Gros Ventre, with some Irish mixed in,…
Rosellen Brown is full of contradictions. She appears friendly and voluble, and admits she loves to perform in front of an audience, but she considers herself shy, and claims she is crippled with discomfort at parties. About writing novels, she says, “I have to struggle with my almost total inability to tell a story,” although…
Continental Drift, Russell Banks’s fifth novel, begins with an invocation: “It’s not memory you need for telling this story … it’s clear-eyed pity and hot, old-time anger and a Northern man’s love of the sun, it’s a white Christian man’s entwined obsession with race and sex and a proper middle-class American’s shame for his nation’s…
Chase Twichell grew up in two geographies: One was New Haven, Connecticut, which she says had little effect on her, except perhaps to put the second in relief. The other was Keene, New York, in the heart of the high hills of the Adirondacks, “a rocky, rough, mountains-and-valleys, fast cold water, lakes-in-the-middle-of-nowhere place” her family…
What strikes you first about Al Young is the voice. It’s a deejay’s voice — articulate; engaging; most of all, smooth — so it’s not surprising to find out that for several years, Young hosted jazz shows in Detroit for WDET and in Berkeley for KJAZ, worked as a public radio announcer, and performed as…
There is something very reassuring about Sue Miller. At forty-nine, she is a strong, vibrantly intelligent woman at the height of her career. The author of three best-selling. critically-acclaimed novels — The Good Mother, Family Pictures, and the recently released For Love — she is poised, confident, and affable. She is a soothing presence, by…
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