Interviews Renee H. Shea Monique Truong / Photo © Haruka Sakaguchi Monique Truong, who came to the United States in 1975 as a refugee from Vietnam, began exploring untold and ignored histories in her first novel, The Book of Salt (2003), told through the voice of Binh, the cook of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in Paris. Her autobiographical second novel, Bitter in the Mouth (2010) is a coming-of-age story set in North Carolina. In her most recent novel, The Sweetest Fruits (Viking, 2019), Truong tells the story of Lafcadio Hearn from the perspective of three women: his mother, Rosa; his first wife, Alethea; and his Japanese wife, Setsu. Shea: At its core, The Sweetest Fruits is a story about storytelling—and it’s Russian dolls of narrative! It’s not only that three different women have their say about Hearn and their relationship with him, but each is telling her story to a specific audience—so issues of mediation and agency add further complications, as do oral vs. written stories and translation. How did you arrive at this approach instead of just telling the story in the voice of one person, then the next, then the next? Truong: This question is a Russian doll of inquiries! You’re absolutely right that the novel is interested in the different ways that stories are transmitted to us: oral vs. written, in our mother tongue vs. in translation, private story vs. public history, women’s voices vs. men’s, face-to-face vs.... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2019-09-17 13:54:26 UTC ]
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When you’re writing a memoir, you find that you’re obliged to confront your own ideas about the nature of memory. In Gore Vidal’s own splendid memoir Palimpsest, he suggests that when we remember an event, we don’t remember it as it actually happened, but rather that we remember our memory of... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-02-11 09:48:31 UTC ]
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Subscribe on iTunes | Spotify | SoundCloud | LARB Editor-in-Chief Tom Lutz is joined by author and USC Professor Viet Thanh Nguyen, winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel The Sympathizer, at a recent LARB Luminary Dinner. Viet begins by talking about about his family’s... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-01-27 20:01:38 UTC ]
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I KEEP FOLDING DOWN the corners of pages in this latest anthology from WriteGirl. It’s that kind of book, contains multitudes, it does — 180 young writers represented, and a range of genres, too: poetry, prose, drama, song — and in between selections, tips to keep a writer of any age on task:... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-01-16 18:00:49 UTC ]
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STACEYANN CHIN MADE a name for herself performing poetry on Russell Simmons’s Def Poetry Jam, but her work extends beyond her electrifying spoken-word performances. She is a civil rights activist and teacher, published a critically acclaimed memoir in 2009 called The Other Side of Paradise,... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-12-29 18:00:18 UTC ]
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Bestselling author Shea Serrano shares his favorite 2019 reads, including an out-of-print travelogue about a pool hustler and Chuck Klosterman stories. The post A Year in Reading: Shea Serrano appeared first on The Millions. Continue reading at The Millions
[ The Millions | 2019-12-02 20:00:28 UTC ]
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“UNLIKE MOST JEWISH BOYS from New Jersey, I have a Jamaican accent,” writes Ross Kenneth Urken in Another Mother, his memoir in which he goes in search of both his recollections of the Jamaican nanny who raised him and all of the things he never knew about her before she died. He writes,... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-11-24 20:00:33 UTC ]
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PUBLISHED IN ENGLISH for the first time by Verso Books, Will and Testament is the latest novel from Vigdis Hjorth, one of Norway’s leading writers. Told from the perspective of Bergljot, a theater critic estranged from her parents and siblings, the narrative is centered around the inheritance of... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-11-21 20:00:35 UTC ]
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The content analytics company Parse.ly has long captivated publishers with its intuitive dashboard to track how articles perform. In October, the 10-year-old company added functionality that tracks conversions. Parse.ly clients can now analyze the type of content people read before they... Continue reading at Folio Magazine
[ Folio Magazine | 2019-11-11 21:36:26 UTC ]
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Los Angeles Times Book Club welcomes Michael Connelly, Ronan Farrow and Julie Andrews Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2019-10-19 15:13:50 UTC ]
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Elton John will be appearing in conversation with David Walliams at an exclusive event in celebration of the singer songwriter’s newly released autobiography, Pan Macmillan has announced. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-15 02:22:32 UTC ]
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With a high-profile launch title in the form of climate change polemic The Future We Choose, Zaffre Books’ new, concise list Manilla is seeking to publish books that set the agenda. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-11 12:15:50 UTC ]
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The Miami Book Fair’s director of operations, Delia Lopez, and director of programs, Lissette Mendez, have been working together for 15 years. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2019-10-11 04:00:00 UTC ]
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LESLIE JAMISON IS NO STRANGER to tough questions. In fact, she’s undyingly attracted to them. Her three previous works — the novel The Gin Closet (2010), the essay collection The Empathy Exams (2014), and the memoir The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath (2018) — all deal explicitly with... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-10-03 12:30:39 UTC ]
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Interviews Carolyne Larrington Audible’s new fiction podcast, Hag, launching August 29, features eight reimaginings of traditional British folktales by eight contemporary female writers, with folktales chosen from across the UK. The collection will be... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2019-08-30 14:21:50 UTC ]
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Miracle Man and The Austin Paradox author William R. Leibowitz tells how to base science fiction on fact so that stories seem plausible—without boring the reader. The post Using Facts As the Base of Science Fiction by William R. Leibowitz appeared first on Writer's Digest. Continue reading at Writer's Digest
[ Writer's Digest | 2019-08-23 14:00:14 UTC ]
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Interviews Mary E. Adams Genaro Kỳ Lý Smith was born in Nha Trang, Vietnam, and raised in California. His first book, The Land Baron’s Sun: The Story of Lý Loc and His Seven Wives, won the 2015 Indie Book Award for best poetry collection. His other works... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2019-08-12 20:31:01 UTC ]
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Interviews Matthew Davis Ugandan novelist and short-story writer Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s first novel, Kintu, won the Kwani Manuscript Project in 2013 and was longlisted for the Etisalat Prize in 2014. She was awarded the 2014 Commonwealth... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2019-08-06 13:42:31 UTC ]
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SAMANTA SCHWEBLIN’S COLLECTION of short stories Mouthful of Birds opens bleakly: When she reaches the road, Felicity understands her fate. He has not waited for her, and, as if the past were a tangible thing, she thinks she can still see the weak reddish glow of the car’s taillights fading on... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-07-10 17:00:00 UTC ]
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On this day in 1901, Dame Barbara Cartland was born. She lived to 98, and in that time wrote 723 novels (mostly romance), which sold more than 750 million copies combined. She is the Guinness World Record-holder for most books published in a single year (191), and that’s honestly not even the... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-07-09 19:52:49 UTC ]
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Interviews Shelly Bhoil Tenzin Dickie is a Tibetan writer and translator and editor of The Treasury of Lives, a biographical encyclopedia of Tibet, Inner Asia, and the Himalayan region. Her edited anthology, Old Demons, New Deities: 21 Short Stories from... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2019-06-25 14:25:59 UTC ]
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