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Poppies might bloom for years following a fire, but eventually will quit blooming until the next fire comes through. In the forests around my hometown, there are good fires and bad fires. It is sometimes difficult in the beginning to tell the difference.
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I am after a music that renders life as it is, and which invites in the intermittent pulsations of life.
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Writer Josh Weil talks about his novel, The Great Glass Sea, magical realism vs. science fiction, Russia’s experiments with mirrored satellites, his early days as an aspiring playwright, and how he uses fear as a fuel to accomplish his work.
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The curse of being a writer is knowing other people. I need other people (to write about) but I can’t handle other people (the way I can literary characters).
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“I am strong. Could I really have any other name?”
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The mountains of Alabama are small mountains—foothills, really—but they are mine like a sports team is mine—like a football game (which I have for so long been near but have not really, really seen) is mine—as in the phrase “We scored! We scored!”
...moreThere’s a bite-sized symposium about the challenges of photographing Appalachia happening over at the Oxford American right now, and it’s a great read. In his essay, “Looking Without Fear,” Roger May writes: Recently, I was thinking about my grandfather and missing him a great deal. I decided to flip through his bible where, throughout the […]
...moreO’Death Outside (Ernest Jenning Record Co.) Don’t let the banjo fool you. For all their eclecticism, Brooklyn-based O’Death’s frame of reference remains firmly indie—strained male tenor singing abstruse lyrics over pop arrangements.
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