http://beatrice.com/wordpress Introducing readers to writers since 1995 Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:14:33 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Authors turn to historical fiction for a variety of reasons—for Kate Furnivall, whose second novel, The Red Scarf, comes out this month, it's all about coming to terms with the surprising revelations of her own family history, and understanding a cultural legacy that she didn't even know about for most ... http://beatrice.com/wordpress/2008/07/07/kate-furnivall-guest-author/ In The World Before Her, Deborah Weisgall contrasts the life of Marian Evans—known better to generations of readers as "George Eliot"—and a (fictional) contemporary sculptor, both of whom travel to Venice during moments where their personal and creative tensions have them at a crossroads. Why Eliot? Weisgall explains what she ... http://beatrice.com/wordpress/2008/07/02/deborah-weisgall-guest-author/ I first came across Maryann McFadden when she told me about her hyper-pink book cover in response to a GalleyCat item I'd written about a "literary" novelist with a disdain for women's fiction. McFadden's book has just been published... although, as she explains in this essay, this isn't the first ... http://beatrice.com/wordpress/2008/06/08/maryann-mcfadden-guest-author/ Leonard Mlodinow's new book, The Drunkard's Walk is about the surprising and misunderstood role that randomness plays in people's fate, and, as Mlodinow himself observes, "Those who study randomness—or write books for Pantheon about it—are not immune to its effects." He reports on some of the odd twists that have ... http://beatrice.com/wordpress/2008/05/21/leonard-mlodinow-guest-author/ Janis Hallowell's She Was comes at an interesting moment—not only has former SLA member Sara Jane Olson, one of the real-world starting points from which the novel takes its own imaginative trajectory, been back in the news this year when she was briefly paroled and then hastily re-imprisoned, we've actually ... http://beatrice.com/wordpress/2008/05/20/janis-hallowell-guest-author/ I started reading the short stories in Christopher Meeks's Months and Seasons on a recent plane ride, and was struck by his quiet sense of humor—he's not a guy who works for laughs, necessarily, but when his characters get to bickering with one another, little spikes emerge from their interactions. ... http://beatrice.com/wordpress/2008/05/18/selling-shorts-christopher-meeks/ Last summer, I ran a guest essay from Ron Currie, Jr. that explained how his collection of linked stories was inspired by a screaming child. Earlier this evening, God Is Dead won the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, presented annually to a writer under the age of ... http://beatrice.com/wordpress/2008/04/28/ron-currie-wins-nypl-prize/ Thanks to Jane Kotapish and Ed Park for making the launch of the Beatrice.com reading series at the Mercantile Library Center for Fiction such a fun evening. I've got some video from the reading, and as soon as Apple and the makers of The Flip resolve the bugs in the ... http://beatrice.com/wordpress/2008/04/19/mercantile-library-april16/ I decided that it was time to upgrade to a new server on my webhost, and that gave me a chance to experiment with WordPress. I realize that things look somewhat rudimentary at the moment, but I'm hoping to learn how to play with the themes when I get a ... http://beatrice.com/wordpress/2008/04/19/dont-be-alarmed/ My interview with Marya Hornbacher appeared in GalleyCat. http://beatrice.com/wordpress/2008/04/18/marya-hornbacher-interview/