Posts by author
Nancy Smith
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Poet or Storyteller?
Tom Waits on Tom Waits, a comprehensive collection of interviews and encounters spanning nearly forty years, is essential reading for any Tom Waits fan.
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Magazine Review #7: Annalemma, Issue 8: Creation
Annalemma’s eighth issue is dedicated to “the creators, the people who make things, the people who use ingenuity and creativity to work around barriers. To the people who adapt to fit their surroundings, to the people who aren’t satisfied with…
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No One Can Take a Bath for You: Why I Write
The other day, a friend of mine said he was giving up writing. This friend happens to be a very good writer. Why? I asked. Too many people already write about the things I write about, he said. I thought…
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Magazine Review #6: Paris Review, Issue 196
The most important—and surprising—thing about this issue of The Paris Review: Roberto Bolaño’s lost novel. This is very exciting for fans of the Chilean writer (I happen to be a somewhat obsessive one) and even more so because The Paris…
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The Rumpus Interview with Aimee Bender
I just think it has become clearer to me that writing is making a vessel to send to a reader.
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Magazine Review #5: Canteen, Issue Six
Issue six of Canteen is gorgeous—clean and modern, lots of white space, square format, luscious paper, a beautiful illustration by Rod Hunting on the cover, more like an art book than a magazine—and because of this, the stakes for good…
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Magazine Review #4:
McSweeney’s 36McSweeney’s 36 can hardly be called a “magazine,” though it’s difficult to know just what to call it. A friendly human-head box filled with an assortment of printed matter would be more accurate. And what an assortment it is.
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Magazine Review #3: Tin House #46, Winter Reading
I’ve been craving winter. Real winter. Snow and ice and shoveling and bundling up to the point of being unable to bend over. We don’t get that here in San Francisco.
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Magazine Review #2: Zoetrope: All-Story (Fall 2010)
One of the most remarkable things about Zoetrope: All-Story has always been their use of guest designers. Every issue carries the unique stamp of the contributing artist but this issue feels especially extraordinary. Kara Walker is the guest designer, and…
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Magazine Review #1: Ploughshares
In his introduction to the issue, guest editor Jim Shepard says, “I’ve been drawn to protagonists who are geniuses at knitting together self-indictment and self-exoneration in ways that are both unconscious and calculated. Protagonists who leave us to sort…
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Nancy Smith: The Last Book I Loved, Willful Creatures
When I was a kid I would wander down the block, four houses over, to visit our neighborhood “grandma,” Mrs. Koski. At her house I was treated to Cheetos and stories. There wasn’t any junk food in my house so…