Notable Online: 10/11–10/17
Literary events taking place virtually this week!
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Posts Tagged: Tobias Carroll
Notable Online: 9/20–9/26
Literary events taking place virtually this week!
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Notable Online: 9/13–9/19
Literary events taking place virtually this week!
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Notable Online: 9/6–9/12
Literary events taking place virtually this week!
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Notable NYC: 11/3–11/9
Literary events in and around NYC this week!
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Notable NYC: 7/28–8/3
Literary events in and around New York City this week!
...moreNotable NYC: 5/20–5/26
Saturday 5/20: Mohammad Rabie and Mona Kareem discuss Otared: Arabic Dystopian Fiction. McNally Jackson Books, 7 p.m., free. Vivien Goldman and Sarada Rauch join the Segue Series. Zinc Bar, 4:30 p.m., $5. Sunday 5/21: Tobias Carroll, Julia Strayer, Bruna Dantas Lobato, M’Bilia Meekers, and Piper Weiss join the Pigeon Pages reading series. POWERHOUSE Archway, 5 […]
...moreNotable NYC: 4/15–4/31
Saturday 4/15: Protest in support of releasing Donald Trump’s tax returns. Bryant Park, 1 p.m., free. Thom Donovan and Marissa Perel join the Segue Series. Zinc Bar, 4:30 p.m., $5. Sunday 4/16: Tongo Eisen-Martin, Mahogany Browne, and Jive Poetic read poetry. Berl’s Poetry Shop, 3 p.m., free.
...moreNotable Twin Cities: 3/19–3/25
Sunday 3/19: Start your week right at Lake of the Isles Lutheran Church (right around the corner from Birchbark Books) with debut Anishinaabe novelists Marcie Rendon and Carter Meland. They’ll read from their work, with a reception and signing to follow. 7 p.m., free. Tuesday 3/21: Meet the Minnesota Book Award finalists with a reception hosted at […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll discusses his newest collection Transitory, the influence of film on his writing, and getting good news at bad times.
...moreNotable NYC: 1/28–2/3
Sunday 1/29: Write to elected officials. Community Bookstore, 7 p.m., free. Robert Marshall, Clifford Chase, Alexander Chee, Lisa Cohen, and Matt Sharpe join the Sunday Night Fiction series. KGB Bar, 7 p.m., free. Daniel José Older, Morgan Parker, Ashley C. Ford, Eve Ewing, Justin Smith, Hari Ziyad, and Tochi Onyebuchi celebrate the release of Beyond Ourselves, […]
...moreNotable Los Angeles: 11/14–11/20
Monday 11/14: Donna Kaz discusses and signs Un/Masked: Memoirs of a Guerrilla Girl on Tour. 7 p.m. at Book Soup. Jilly Gagnon engages with an interactive reading of Choose Your Own Misery: The Holidays. 7 p.m. at The Last Bookstore. Tobias Carroll reads from Reel, and Margaret Wappler reads from Neon Green. 8 p.m. at […]
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Transitory by Tobias Carroll
Michael Deagler reviews Transitory by Tobias Carroll today in Rumpus Books.
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Anna March’s Reading Mixtape #26: Fiction I Read and Loved This Summer
Not a one of these is a “beach read,” though I read many of them on the beach. Every one of these novels and short story collections transported me deeper into myself. Every one of these books excited me and made me hungry to live more, love more, think more, feel more, give more. What […]
...morePunk Magic
Over at Hazlitt, Tobias Carroll writes about the intersection of punk and magic in various fictional works, from The Insides by Jeremy P. Bushnell to the Hellblazer comics and Buffy the Vampire Slayer—a surprisingly varied history of what might, at first, seem like a pairing that just shouldn’t work, but does, deliciously.
...moreThe Three Legs of the World
For Electric Literature, Tobias Carroll chats with Matthew Neill Null about the role of landscapes in his story collection Allegheny Front, and how Null crafted the “ideal juxtaposition of humanity and the natural world”: Many of the stories pivot on fraught interactions between humans and animals. Too often the land is used merely as a stage, animals as […]
...moreStranger than Real Life
At Lit Hub, Tobias Carroll discusses the enduring appeal of strange fairy tales, and their influence on contemporary fiction: They remind us that the larger world is inherently complex, that the lessons imparted by stories of wicked creatures and good-hearted men and women rarely apply in our world. Bodies that change in bizarre ways, shifting […]
...moreLines between Genres
At Hazlitt, Tobias Carroll writes on the current state of science fiction and fantasy, with recent works in both genres borrowing from the other to expand the limits of their worlds.
...moreWorldbuilding, Novelbuilding
I have an impression that I write novels and then I publish the structure of those novels. There are missing Legos in that castle. And I like that. You must open a space for the reader. For Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Tobias Carroll interviews Álvaro Enrigue on the ways he constructed his second novel, Sudden Death, […]
...moreA Story that’s Good on Paper
At Electric Literature, author Rachel Cantor discusses her second novel, Good on Paper, including the 15-year process of condensing her characters’ wide world into a story about adventure and translation.
...moreThe Power of Pen Names
At Lit Hub, Tobias Carroll explores the history of authors using pen names, and what happens when these pseudonyms take on their own persona: Under the best conditions, they can add another wrinkle to certain literary works; under the worst, they can amplify already-problematic conditions. Personas can be a kind of alter ego; they’re also […]
...moreReinventing Myth and Genre for Fiction
Fables and fairy tales and folk tales can compel us on their own, but they’re also ripe for reinvention. Some authors may take the skeleton of a centuries-old story and use it as the basis for something new; others may borrow the language or structure in order to apply them to something else entirely. Over […]
...moreThe Video Game Literati
Tobias Carroll, writing for Hazlitt, dissects the influence video games have had on literature, from writers like Ernest Cline of Ready Player One to Jonathan Lethem and an entire literary anthology, Press Start to Play. We’re only waiting for Franzen to admit his obsession with playing as Oddjob in Goldeye 64, making all his friends hate […]
...moreRock Meets Paper
Musicians have always drawn inspiration from literary artists, and vice versa. Over at Lit Hub, Tobias Carroll explores the increasingly literary side of contemporary rock festivals: Perhaps the rise of literary events at music festivals is part of a broader move towards a growing sense of the multidisciplinary—consider Kanye West’s forays into the world of […]
...moreHistory In The Driver’s Seat
Tobias Carroll interviews Robert Kloss about his new novel, The Revelator, for Electric Literature. The two discuss the challenges of writing novels in the second person and how history shapes characters: We have the illusion that we are in control of our lives, that we determine events, but we do not. We are at the mercy of […]
...moreN.K. Jemison on Experimental Fantasy
Over at Electric Literature, Tobias Carroll interviews fantasy author N.K. Jemison about her character- and world-building processes, the evolution of her publication history, and narrative structure. I read pretty widely, not just fantasy, so I don’t feel particularly wedded to the genre conventions. Fortunately, my publisher has been supportive in letting me explore, and my […]
...moreNotable NYC: 8/29–9/4
Saturday 8/29: Ruby Brunton, Jasmine Gibson, Faith Heyliger, Stephon Lawrence, Melissa McDaniel, and Kayla Classy Morse celebrate Mellow Pages Library with Vapors Vol. 1. Silent Barn, 2 p.m., free. Sunday 8/30: Ugly Duckling Presse, publisher of experimental poetry, hosts a fundraiser. Paperbox, 3 p.m., $50. Hai-Dang Phan, Camilo Roldan, Jacqueline Waters, and Lindsay Turner mark […]
...moreLiterary Redo
Over at Lit Hub, Tobias Carroll takes a look at three recently reissued books (Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns, Genoa by Paul Metcalf, and A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin) trying again to seek out the success they deserve based on merits of exemplary craft and wonderful stories, and meditates on […]
...moreAll Things Weird and Literary
We can toss around “sci-fi,” “fantasy,” “magical realism,” “surrealism,” and a dozen other genres in our struggle to categorize literature, but the term “weird fiction” is an interesting category that attempts to encapsulate a unifying element. Over at Lit Hub, Tobias Caroll makes the case for “weird fiction” and covers several examples of its wide breadth.
...moreThe Politics of Fiction
Fiction written under an authoritarian or totalitarian government often dares readers to view the work as a critique of that society. In a review of two science fiction works by Cuban authors, Electric Literature takes a look at the surprising connection between oppressive political ideologies and fantastical worlds in fiction.
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