Posts by author
Bryan Washington
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Roots and Ragtime
John Jeremiah Sullivan and Joel Finsel chronicle the rise, fall, and in-between wanderings of Houstonian booksellers, civil rights activists, reporters, and musicians—in oversized, Texan fashion. Most people have heard of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, canonical English poet and laudanum addict. Far…
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Waves and Illusions
On the latest New Yorker fiction podcast, Etgar Keret treats listeners to a reading of Donald Barthelme’s “Chablis”. Afterwards, he and Deborah Treissman chat about voice, babies, and how writing short stories is a little like surfing.
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Boy Kings Forever
Jonathan Leal riffs on abandoning Texas, Steve Reich, and Domingo Martinez’s new memoir for the LARB: When I left the border for college some years ago, I dreamed of permanent escape; and, like Domingo Martinez, I turned to song to process…
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A High Wind Elsewhere
The Oyster Review caught up with Edwin Frank, the NYRB Classics publisher of forgotten works from the 50s—and the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
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The Most I Can Do
A.N. Denver geeks out on Kelly Link over at Longreads: Be assured, serious readers, that there is no more successful writer at walking the edge of speculation and genre. She’s so good at what she does, that it makes her work…
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Don’t and Won’t
Over at the Louisiana Channel, Lydia Davis throws some advice at young writers. Among other tokens: read the books you want to write.
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Letting Them Go
Down at the Atlantic, Nathaniel Rich touches on Kazuo Ishiguro, memory, and literature’s Borgesian debts: The answer, as most readers will intuitively conclude, lies between two extremes. Forget everything and you lose your soul; remember everything and you lose the ability…
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Beyond Joy Luck
At The Toast, Nicole Soojung Callahan, Christine Hyung-Oak Lee, Karrisa Chen, and others weigh in on the state of Asian-American literature: I grew up in L.A. and Long Beach. White people were always the minority in my schools and neighborhoods,…
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The Literary Magician
D. Scot Miller extemporizes on Roberto Bolaño, and the legacy Latin American letters just can’t escape from, over at Gawker: Did I say that Roberto Bolano was a genius? I meant to say magician. Bolano is a literary magician; a…
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Cecil and His Women
Over at BOMB Magazine, César Aime treats us all to new fiction (translated by Chris Andrews).
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Black and White and Black
Over at the New Yorker, Zadie Smith tackles Key and Peele: The two men are physically incongruous. Key is tall, light brown, dashingly high-cheek-boned, and L.A. fit; Peele is shorter, darker, more rounded, cute like a Teddy bear. Peele, who…
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Sipping Dandelion Wine
Henry Stewart waxes nostalgic on Ray Bradbury for Electric Literature—he points at coming of age, the lessons we learn, and how the whole of life can be found in The Martian Chronicles.