After the Nelson Algren Tribute
by Chris Deguire
Some general impressions:
I'm not from Chicago, but I feel very much a part of Chicago. I
remember hearing Nelson Algren's name in my undergrad days and had no
idea what folks were talking about. This was a nice tribute because as
I've come to understand a bit of his relationship to and for this city
over the years I got to appreciate his influence a lot more. I guess
now I have reading to do.
The Stories Behind Story Week
by Daniel Prazer
Assistant Artistic Director
You know how some mornings, you wake up with a song's melody lodged so
deeply inside your skull, you know it's going to echo in there all
day? Just rattle around like the last coffee beans in the bag?
That didn't happen to me this morning.
I woke up at 5 a.m. from a Story Week dream. I was stuffing envelopes
full of bubbled-wrapped books to give to each of our amazingly
talented guests as they arrive at the airport. Swag bags, you know?
Except these were packed in once-sent padded envelopes that we'd
staple shut. Hardly a swanky first impression. Then I opened my eyes,
and instead of a song stuck up in my head, I had a to-do list.
Who do you trust?
by Tiffany Smoot
I never considered writing a story from the point of view of an unreliable character. What can it do for a story?
Mun and Sentences
by Justin Keberlein
While I’ve come to admire, and in most cases enjoy, all of the writers we’ve been assigned this semesters, Nami Mun has pushed her way to the head of the pack. Her striking command of language, her ability to convey her characters voices, and her talent to create vivid, life like scenes come together beautifully in
Miles From Nowhere. Her talent is best observed in the way she effectively creates sentences that are at once poetic, and filled with her characters voices.
Rushing Past
by Abigail Sheaffer
Sitting down to read Millet during breakfast, I noticed something about myself as a reader: I forgot the oatmeal beside me whose heat was lost, and a tall cup of coffee at my side; I forgot it in favor of becoming submissive to words that submerged me fast into a world besides my own.
Price-less
by Sarah Van Den Bosch
Crime-related stories had never really been my "thing" until I began reading
Clockers. It isn't just a story about hard thugs dealing with the mean streets but about people and the different avenues that they travel on in life and what happens when those avenues cross with one another. There is much more to be said about
Strike than just a simple drug dealer and the same goes with the police officer Rocco. There is depth and relatability, at least on a small scale, that the reader has with these characters so how does a white man who has never really lived the life of either write a story about a drug dealer in the projects?
Clicks for Nami
by William Negus
Well, Nami Mun definitely has a lot of information available to her readers. Her Wordpress page is full of interesting things that I’m sure anyone who is not done with her book yet will enjoy looking through once they are finished. I think the best way to understand Nami and her book is by looking through the many interviews that she has available on the page (they unfold an interesting story in themselves, from how she came to be a writer to the ideas she wanted to present in her novel.)
Lydia Millet: Dark Love of Flaws
by Justin Keberlein
Describing herself politically as “left of left,” and taking an interest in characters who are “obsessive and insane,” it’s quite obvious the Lydia Millet has no problem going against the grain.
Links: Francine Prose and Nami Mun
The authors speak about their processes.
Vote Millet! (for Post-Apocalypse Literature)
by Joseph Benedict
I’ve yet to crack open her assigned book, Everyone’s Pretty, but I already know I’ll get a thrill, or at least a good kick, out of Lydia Millet for Oral Report week. One scratch on the surface and already I’ve discovered her stories are unorthodox, extreme and almost brutal, her characters and mostly psychotic and obsessive, and the generality of her settings are doom and gloom—wonderful!
A Little Keret and a Lot of Prose
by Molly Leckron
When searching through audio interviews and reading and bibliographies and text interviews I came across this quote: "My prime motivation to write stories," Keret said, "is that I want to read them. I would be very happy if somebody else had done it, but they're all lazy . . . , so I have to write it all by myself...”
Thoughts on Etgar Keret
by Jeremy Thomason
Born in Ramat, Israel, Keret uses a lot of his religious and cultural background to feed his story ideas with a regionalistic flavor and refreshing variety of characters and places.
Literary Rock and Roll at the AWP: Story Week Style
By Randall Albers, Fiction Writing Department Chair
This year, as it was some years back when we did a prelude event honoring
Ray Bradbury, Story Week is really Story Month. The show on Friday night of
the AWP convention got things off to a rousing start, as James's posting
recounts much more vividly than I could ever do. To know that it was just a
precursor to the upcoming week of great events in March is fantastic to
contemplate.
Story Week Goes to AWP: Literary Rock & Roll
by James Lower, Fictionary Assistant Editor
Those of us at AWP may have played coy over the appetizers last night, but by dessert, Literary Rock & Roll had us between the sheets. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the audience was the prudish Goodie Two Shoes just dying to loose its pony tail, and Story Week came sauntering in, its leather jacket jangling, to grab our shoulders, yank back our hair, and shove its literary tongue down our collective throat.
Welcome to Story Week 2009
As the 13th Annual Story Week Festival of Writers ramps up for yet another
year of literary bombast and carnival atmosphere, we invite you to blog
eloquent on all things Story Week: past, present, and future. Students in
professor Lott Hill's Critical Reading & Writing II class are reading and
journaling on a good number of books written by Story Week 2009 featured
guests. They will share their thoughts and insights right here.
