June 2012
10 posts
8 tags
Erotic Lit
I have no interest in reading “Fifty Shades of Grey.” If I want to be turned on, I’ll reread James Salter’s “A Sport and a Pastime.”
5 tags
Short Stories You Should Read
Listed in no particular order. I forced myself to choose only one story per writer (very difficult in some cases). There is a lot of amazing short fiction out there, but these are stories—of various styles—that have stuck with me over the years and have taught me what a story can be. I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot of gems.
“Wakefield” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
...
3 tags
Electric Literature's Recommended Reading: Vol.1,... →
Jim Shepard picks my friend Marie-Helene Bertino’s story, “North of” for this week’s Recommended Reading from Electric Literature. Read it!
recommendedreading:
Vol.1, No.3
EDITOR’S NOTE
I haven’t been as won over by a story as completely as I was by Marie-Helene Bertino’s “North of” in years. I loved it of course for its deadpan comedy, much of which centers around its...
20 tags
“That’s why it’s a good title. When I hear ‘safe as houses,’ it’s...”
– I chatted with my friend Marie-Helene Bertino* in Canteen about writing and other things
*author of the forthcoming Safe As Houses
4 tags
My June poem
The poem I’m reading every day this month is by Nick Flynn:
Cartoon Physics, part 1
Children under, say, ten, shouldn’t know
that the universe is ever-expanding,
inexorably pushing into the vacuum, galaxies
swallowed by galaxies, whole
solar systems collapsing, all of it
acted out in silence. At ten we are still learning
the rules of cartoon animation,
that if a man draws a...
