The Presence of the Past in Good Night, Irene: A Conversation with Luis Alberto Urrea, by Renee H. Shea Interviews [email protected] Fri, 05/26/2023 - 13:30 The author’s mother, Phyllis Irene McLaughlinAward-winning writer Luis Alberto Urrea describes Good Night, Irene (Little, Brown, 2023) as “the book I have spent most of my life preparing to write.” This novel is inspired by his mother, Phyllis Irene McLaughlin, and by Jill Pitts Knappenberger for their work in World War II as part of the American Red Cross Clubmobile Service. Known affectionately as the Donut Dollies, these women were in the midst of combat as they drove their trucks from one site of battle to another. Urrea was aware that his mother had been one of the 250 Clubmobile women, but not until after she died did he learn that her war buddy Jill was still living and the keeper of an extensive archive. Years of conversations with Jill, research into the Clubmobile corps, and travel to key places of the European theater led to Good Night, Irene’s fictional tribute to Urrea’s mother and her friend Jill as well as other overlooked but heroic women who served in World War II. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for The Devil’s Highway, Urrea (b. 1955) is the author of numerous other works of nonfiction, poetry, and fiction, including the national bestsellers The Hummingbird’s Daughter and The House of Broken Angels (see WLT, Nov. 2022, 6). A 2019 Guggenheim Fellow,... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2023-05-26 18:30:53 UTC ]
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FEW WRITERS MANAGE to capture the essence of the California that exists beyond the images typically offered up by film and television — palm trees, beaches, gridlock, Hollywood, Kardashians; images the rest of the country seems so willing to accept about us “out here.” Kendra Atleework’s new... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-11-01 18:00:10 UTC ]
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CHRISTA PARRAVANI’S SEMINAL Guernica essay published last year, “Life and Death in West Virginia,” was my introduction to this author and inspired me to seek out more of her work. I was thrilled when she agreed to an interview. The personal is political, and in Loved and Wanted: A Memoir of... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-10-29 19:00:52 UTC ]
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I DON’T KNOW when I first became aware of Lynne Sharon Schwartz’s writing, but it was probably sometime between 1980, when Raymond Carver lauded her on the basis of her National Book Award–nominated first novel Rough Strife, and 1989, when Sven Birkerts raved about Schwartz’s PEN/Faulkner... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-10-29 15:00:49 UTC ]
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Interviews Ari Larissa Heinrich / Photo by Tara Pixley Ari Larissa Heinrich is the translator of Qiu Miaojin’s Last Words from Montmartre (New York Review Books) and Chi Ta-wei’s The Membranes (forthcoming from Columbia University Press). They... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-10-27 22:09:23 UTC ]
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ON JULY 2 of this year, I interviewed the author Nadia Terranova at her mother’s house in Santa Marinella, Italy, on a Zoom call from my apartment in Santa Monica, California. Back in 2015, I’d written a review of her first novel Gli anni al contrario (The Years in Reverse) and we’d met for... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-10-27 17:00:01 UTC ]
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Interviews Photo by Beowulf Sheehan / Courtesy of www.tayarijones.com Tayari Jones is a New York Times best-selling author from Atlanta, Georgia. Her most recent novel, An American Marriage, won the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Jones has been... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-10-22 14:14:35 UTC ]
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TAMSYN MUIR’S DEBUT NOVEL, Gideon the Ninth, the first in her Locked Tomb trilogy, exploded into the world to universal critical acclaim last year. The series doesn’t fit nearly into the castles-versus-spaceships division that characterizes much of mainstream science fiction and fantasy. It has... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-10-21 17:00:28 UTC ]
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Nigerian-American writer, producer, and actress Yetide Badaki, well known for acting in the TV series This Is Us and American Gods, comes from a family of storytellers. She recalls sitting by the fire as a youth and listening to her elders. “Storytelling is such a part of just being,” she says.... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-10-20 08:48:10 UTC ]
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LET’S DISPENSE WITH the small surprises up front. The latest outing from Smith Henderson, acclaimed author of what others might call literary fiction — his award-winning 2014 debut, Fourth of July Creek — is indeed a thriller. And it’s not a solo endeavor — he’s teamed up with a friend, Jon Marc... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-10-11 12:30:47 UTC ]
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This librarian has seen some truly creative ideas for how libraries hype books virtually, and she's here to share the wealth. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-10-05 10:30:00 UTC ]
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Edward P. Jones’s The Known World occupies a somewhat odd space in the literary canon: it is highly decorated, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and it was even a bestseller, but 17 years after its publication, it feels curiously underread. I acknowledge, of course, that all notions of “underread,” like... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-10-05 08:49:24 UTC ]
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Emilia Fox is narrating Victoria Hislop’s One August Night (Headline Review), 15 years after reading for its predecessor, The Island. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-10-02 09:10:58 UTC ]
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The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association gathered on Zoom for its annual membership meeting this week. Despite a difficult year, attendance was good and leadership said the organization is in strong financial shape. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-10-01 04:00:00 UTC ]
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The Good Literary Agency (TGLA) has hired Kemi Ogunsanwo as an agent, tasked with building a list across fiction and non-fiction. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-10-01 03:35:01 UTC ]
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On Sunday, President Trump demanded that Joe Biden, his Democratic opponent, take a drug test ahead of (or just after) their first debate, which is tonight. “His Debate performances have been record setting UNEVEN, to put it mildly,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Only drugs could have caused this... Continue reading at Columbia Journalism Review
[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2020-09-29 12:19:19 UTC ]
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We’re a little more than a month out from Election Day and the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list is looking predictably odd. In a year when books about anti-racism have reached unprecedented sales, so too has the tide of journalistic blockbusters and books by conservative mainstays been... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-09-25 13:58:38 UTC ]
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My correspondence with K-Ming Chang began with fan mail. I had recently read her flash fiction story Gloria in Split Lip—a knife-sharp story about queerness, shame, and faith—and instantly devoured the rest of her fiction and her poetry, moved by the possibilities in her writing. A Kundiman... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-09-24 08:48:00 UTC ]
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In packed workshop sessions and thematic buzz panels, booksellers and editors were able to rekindle much of the educational reason for attending—and some of the interpersonal reasons as well. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-09-23 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Penguin Random House launches The Conversation, a hub of content collections 'to combat racism and end racial inequities'—meant for families, educators, and businesses. The post PRH Opens ‘The Conversation’ To ‘Sustain Antiracist Engagement’ appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2020-09-22 19:17:06 UTC ]
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CLAUDIA RANKINE’S Just Us: An American Conversation completes a vital trilogy that includes Citizen: An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric. Rankine’s fluid artistry is complex and human. Twenty-one intimate, and collaborative, essays, in verso and recto format, swerve... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-09-21 12:30:23 UTC ]
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