Patience, Perspective, and the Power of Story: An Interview with Toni Ann Johnson, by Scott LaMascus Interviews [email protected] Mon, 10/16/2023 - 13:46 Storyteller Toni Ann Johnson uses her skills as an actor, playwright, and fiction writer to tell powerful stories of race, reconciliation, and the effects of lingering racism. She is award-winning on stage and screen, most recently with her story collection Light Skin Gone to Waste (University of Georgia Press, 2022), selected for the 2021 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. When I spoke to Johnson in Los Angeles and later by email, we explored the role stories can play in our understanding of truths, including matters many would rather forget. Scott LaMascus: If you were joining the late Flannery O’Connor on her porch in Milledgeville, Georgia, what do you hope she would praise about your stories that were honored with the award named for her? Toni Ann Johnson: I wouldn’t expect Ms. O’Connor to praise my stories. Her racism would likely have prevented her from appreciating their subject matter. In her letters, she wrote: About the Negroes, the kind I don’t like is the philosophizing prophesying pontificating kind, the James Baldwin kind. Very ignorant but never silent. Baldwin can tell us what it feels like to be a Negro in Harlem but he tries to tell us everything else too. O’Connor was put off by James Baldwin’s writing because it dared to stray beyond the... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2023-10-16 18:46:19 UTC ]
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The writer’s signature style of ending—a final, thrilling note—has the touch of magic that distinguishes the form at its best. Continue reading at New Yorker
[ New Yorker | 2021-06-28 10:00:00 UTC ]
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Andersen Press is to relaunch its weekly online children's storytime sessions in partnership with Seven Stories, the National Centre for Children's Books. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-01-15 10:26:35 UTC ]
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The Boston Book Festival has announced that a short story by Grace Talusan is the 10th annual selection for its One City One Story initiative. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-07-24 04:00:00 UTC ]
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THE STARLESS SEA, Erin Morgenstern’s sophomore fantasy novel, takes effort to read, but there are countless narratively complex works of science fiction and fantasy that amply reward such effort: N. K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season comes to mind as one recent, prominent example of the type. The... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-06-20 17:00:48 UTC ]
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The Edmund Kemper, audiobook narrator story is sensational. The work of The Blind Project, though, is vital, important, and worth knowing. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2019-10-14 10:35:39 UTC ]
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In pushing the romance genre aside, Australia’s publishing industry sent its most successful writers to pursue their careers abroadNalini Singh is trying to convince me to read a love story starring bears. The tiny author is tucked up under a huge scarf in a cafe on a freezing August day in... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-08-17 22:00:54 UTC ]
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In his new book, former F.C.C. Chariman Tom Wheeler deftly explores 500 years of network revolutions, and offers an invaluable take on the challenges we now face. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2019-03-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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First Story and the University of Cambridge are the new partners of the BBC’s short story awards, replacing BookTrust, in a three-year collaboration starting in 2018. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2017-09-29 00:00:00 UTC ]
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As a bona-fide hater of actual reality, virtual reality is very appealing to me. However, I’m not that into 100 hour AAA games like Asgard’s Wrath 2 or Half Life: Alyx. I’m into short interactive experiences that can’t be had anywhere else. Good news for me? The Apple Vision Pro is getting a... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2024-05-08 18:39:58 UTC ]
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Winning books include Night Watch and King: A Life, while journalism winners focused on coverage of the Israel-Gaza warThis year’s Pulitzer winners include the New York Times and ProPublica as well as authors including Jayne Anne Phillips and Jonathan Eig.The Pulitzers honored the best in... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2024-05-06 21:10:55 UTC ]
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The novelist traded a finance career to pursue fiction. It just may have saved his life. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-04-26 04:00:00 UTC ]
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The former N.F.L. player has been living with A.L.S. for more than a decade. Sharing “the most lacerating and vulnerable times” in “A Life Impossible” was worth the physical and emotional toll, he says. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2024-04-25 09:00:47 UTC ]
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I have always loved the versatility of the short story, how it can so easily take on the forms of other things. There are playlist short stories, recipe short stories, diary and epistolary-style short stories. There are flash fiction stories, short short stories, and long short stories that... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2024-04-15 11:00:00 UTC ]
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“I mean that as an organizing principle,” says the U.S. poet laureate, who has edited a new anthology of nature poetry called “You Are Here,” “and also as a slight against prose.” Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2024-04-04 09:01:58 UTC ]
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Short stories can do things novels cannot because they’re short. They’re limber and can dart in and out of close-fitting places. They can be weird and daring in ways that novels cannot always sustain. Joy Williams writes in, “8 Essential Attributes of the Short Story (and one way it differs from... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2024-03-28 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Jimmy Fallon's book club returns, a consideration of Toni Morrison's rejection letters, and the best book to read about Daniel Kahneman. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2024-03-27 21:34:00 UTC ]
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