News & Events
May/June/July
The summer includes a lot of teaching. I’ve got two Zoom classes on Writing Workshops starting in May:
The Storytelling Lab: Read & Analyze 5 Great Stories in 5 Weeks, Starts Tuesday, May 21st, 7-9 PM EST. A discussion class on Zoom in which we look at amazing stories each week with an eye toward construction. We usually end with a writing prompt so that we get a chance to practice one of the techniques in the story.
Five Stories in Five Weeks: Generating 5 New Stories with Structured Writing Prompts, Starts Wednesday, May 29th, 7-9 PM EST. A generative Zoom class in which we use targeted writing prompts to start a new story each week. Includes a 30 minute conference in which we talk about developing one of those starts into a full-length story.
In June, I'm trying something new: a four-week online workshop for writers working on fiction or memoir. I'm organizing this one on my own, not through a platform, so you'll need to email me directly at robertanthonysiegel@gmail.com to sign up.
And I’ve got two in-person classes in July at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival:
There is a weekend intensive, Go Ahead, Make a Scene! How to Tell Your Story through Dramatic, Vivid, Exciting Scenes, starting July 20, and right before that, a weeklong course for beginning memoirists entitled Kickstart Your Memoir, which starts Sunday, July 14.
November/December/January
An eco-resort in Hawaii that is also a working organic farm…Whales…Sea turtles…endless birdsong…plus a dozen fantastic memoirists! Taught in-person in January at Writing Workshops Hawaii, a marvelous experience I will never forget.
August/September/October
My essay “Thirteen Ways of Listening to the Rain,” originally in the New England Review, is out now in Best American Essays 2023, selected by Vivian Gornick and Robert Atwan and including Laura Kipnis, Merrill Gerber, Chris Dennis, Sandra Eliason, Xujun Eberlein, Ciara Alfaro, Eric Borsuk, Sylvie Baumgartel…
Conversation with Sheeraz Dasti on the power of setting in fiction for the Mid-American Review Blog—alongside the poet Raza Ali Hasan. I get to mention Henry James, my favorite thing to do.
Interview on the Writing Workshops blog discussing what it means to read like a writer.
May/June/July
I was happy to discuss all the ways we have to study creative writing now with a wonderful panel of writers for 1455 Lit Arts’ magazine Moveable Type. Lots of great advice for students of all ages and interests.
Spring is the perfect time to start a novel. Join us: Start Your Novel: A Weekend Bootcamp, May 6th & 7th.
In June, I’m teaching Start Your Memoir: A Weekend Intensive, June 2 - June 4, and Flash Fiction: A Weekend Intensive, June 9 - June 11. Both are online classes.
In July, I’m teaching in-person at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival in Iowa City: Kickstarting Your Novel, July 16–21, and How to Write a Short Story, July 22-23.
February/March/April
Delighted that my essay “Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Rain,” originally in the marvelous NER, has been chosen for inclusion in Best American Essays 2023, due out this November. Vivian Gornick is the amazing guest editor, Bob Atwan the incredible series editor.
“A single balloon must stand for a lifetime of thinking about balloons,” said Donald Barthelme. Hence “The Chinese Surveillance Balloon,” out now in The Drift.
October/November/December/January
Friday, January 27, 9:00 AM to 9:45 EST, I’ll be hosting Write Wilmington, the weekly online generative writing session. Forty-five minutes of writing prompts and community, free and open to the public—and you can join in from anywhere.
I’m giving a remote presentation on imagery and sensory detail at the Off Campus Writers’ Workshop on Thursday, January 19, 9:30-12:00 Central Time. Haiku is in the mix, naturally.
July/August/September
Found amidst the top secret documents at Mar-a-Lago and now released by Palgrave: American Literature in the Era of Trumpism: Alternative Realities, edited by the fearless Dolores Resano and full of great articles on the craziness—including my own, “Empathy in the Age of Trump: Or, Using Our Weird Cultural Moment to Reassess How Fiction Works.”
Delighted that my palm-of-the-hand story, “The Silver Door,” is up now on The Harvard Review web site.
I think our 1455 Summer Lit Fest panel, MFA Nation, was pretty interesting, thanks to fellow panelists Karen E. Bender, Sophfronia Scott, and Darryl Whetter. In case you missed it, it’s archived here.
On July 15, noon, I’ll be joining Karen E. Bender, Darryl Whetter, and Sophfronia Scott to discuss the issues around getting an MFA—at the 1455 Summer Lit Fest. The panel discussion will be free and online, but you’ll need to register.
April/May/June
New online class at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival coming in July: Structuring the Novel will run 4 weeks, July 9-30, and cover all the hard confusing planning that novels need in order to make sense of themselves.
Up on the New England Review Web site: audio recording of me reading “Thirteen Ways of Listening to the Rain.” Kind of like an audiobook, but very short.
Just out: In the Between: 21st Century Short Stories is a wonderful anthology full of great work, including stories from Roxanne Gay, Bryan Washington, Alice Hoffman, Akhil Sharma—and my own perennial, “The Right Imaginary Person.”
I had a thought-provoking conversation on voice with the Pakistani novelist and translator Muhammad Sheeraz Dasti: “Finding Your Voice as a Writer,” in Pakistan’s The News on Sunday. The piece also includes the fascinating Pakistani fiction writer Aamer Hussein.
January 2022/February/March
My palm-of-the-hand essay “Thirteen Ways of Listening to the Rain” is out now in the print edition of The New England Review (Vol. 43, No. 1).
I have a new five-week class open for registration at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival Online, running April 12-May 10: The Personal Essay: A Generative Class for Beginners.
Just came across a conversation I had with Caryn Green about the history of the novel this past summer: Novel Talk. Don Quixote, The Tale of Genji, Jane Austen—we cover a lot of territory.
And found these two pieces from my year in Taiwan: “Last Fragments from a Taiwan Notebook” and the earlier “Fragments from a Taiwan Notebook,” both in Research and Reflection: Fulbright Taiwan Journal. And there’s a video at the end…
October/November/December
I have two upcoming classes with the Iowa Summer Writing Festival:
Jan. 18-Feb. 22, 2022. Start Your Memoir
Jan. 22-March 12, 2022. Novel Writing: Finish Your First Draft
July/August/September
I’m delighted that my palm-of-the-hand essay “Thirteen Ways of Listening to the Rain” will be in the March 2022 issue of the New England Review. It was a rainy evening here in Brooklyn when I got the news, which somehow made it even better.
April/May/June
My palm-of-the-hand essay “Quintet of Remembrance” is out now in the anthology You Are The River, published by the North Carolina Museum of Art—and seemingly available only from the museum (it’s a gorgeous book, if you’re in the area). My essay responds to a video piece of the same title by the extraordinary artist Bill Viola.
I’m teaching “How to Start Your Memoir” at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, June 17–July 22, Thursdays. It’s a six-week course.
My memoir workshop at Drexel on May 18th will be on imagery and will use haiku.
Tuesday, May 18 from 12:30-1:50 pm: I’ll be reading at the Drexel Writing Festival in a doubleheader with the inimitable Karen E. Bender, fictionist extraordinaire. The event—like the entire festival—is free and open to the public, so please join. You’ll need to register to get the zoom link…Following the reading I’ll be doing a workshop on memoir, from 2:00-3:20 pm. Again, the workshop is free and open to the public, you just need to register to get the zoom link.
I’ll be teaching an online fiction course through the Iowa Summer Writing Festival from May 11–June 8, 2021: Openings: An Advanced Novel Workshop. Registration opens Monday, April 26.
My second novel, All Will Be Revealed, is now available in audiobook from Audible.com.
January/February/March 2021
Keep an eye out for Teaching Creative Writing in Asia. It’s an anthology of essays on, well, exactly that, edited by Darryl Whetter and due out from Routledge at the end of August, 2021. Work by Robin Hemley, Xu Xi, James Shea, and many other marvelous writers. My essay: “Teaching Creative Writing in Taiwan: Or, Taking the Worry Out of the Word ‘Creative.’"
My four-week online course “How to Write a Short Story” begins Monday, April 12—at The Iowa Summer Writing Festival. The class is full but there’s a wait list open.
I’ll be teaching “Beginning Your Memoir,” a five-week online class hosted by The Iowa Summer Writing Festival that runs from March 19 through April 16. Registration opens Thursday, February 18.
October/November/December
Is fiction good for you? Can it make you a better person? Is that even the point? My last piece for the year is up now on The Ploughshares Blog: “The Argument Over Empathy.”
Will the globalization of culture mean the end of literature as we know it? My essay on the fascinating Japanese novelist Mizumura Minae is up now on The Ploughshares Blog: “What Does Being a Japanese Writer Mean in a Globalizing World?”
I’m teaching my first online class for 1455: “How to Begin Your Novel;” it runs for four weeks. But I’m also offering a one-day class on flash fiction, and there is still plenty of room; it runs on Saturday, October 24, from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM.
July/August/September
Charles Mingus, Herman Melville, and the last line of Gatsby—I interview the inimitable Sean Murphy for the 14:55 interview!
I’ve signed up to teach a variety of online writing classes through the non-profit arts organization 1455. A four-session workshop, Starting Your Novel, starts October 7, and Flash Fiction, a one-day class, on October 24. They are open to everyone.
I got to do the 14:55 interview with the extraordinary Sean Murphy, fearless leader of 1455 Arts. Mannequins, Stuart Little, Moby Dick—we covered ground.
I’m always a little amazed by the way a piece of writing can continue to circulate, stubbornly becoming part of the world. Just came across “My Father, Lawyer for the Hells Angels” in “Writing on Life in and out of Law.” It’s on a blog called The Lawyering Writer.
The recording of my talk at the 2020 1455 Lit Fest on writing during a pandemic isn’t up yet, but here’s my talk from 2019 on memoir—with the brilliant Jeanne McCulloch: 1455 Summer Literary Festival: Family Affairs.
How odd: just discovered that Audible has an audio recording of my article in Smithsonian, “Why I Take Fake Pills.”
The 2nd annual 1455 Lit Fest is coming up, Thursday, July 16, through Saturday, July 18. Many excellent panels and presentations—all virtual via the Web, and all completely free. My talk, Writing Through the Pandemic, is at noon on Saturday.
April/May/June
I’m always fascinated when painters become writers, and the Japanese artist Kusama Yayoi is a particularly interesting case. My piece on her fiction, “The Artist as Writer,” is up now on The Ploughshares Blog.
April 10—my essay on the caustic, funny, charming Sei Shonagon is up now on The Ploughshares Blog.
April 4-10: the Corona pandemic didn’t allow me to travel to Singapore for my residency at Lasalle College of the Arts, so I’m doing it via the miracle of videoconferencing! Such a pleasure working with these hardworking, talented students.
January/February/March 2020
The world’s oldest novel enters the postmodern age: “The Tale of Genji, Suspended Between East and West” on The Ploughshares Blog.
January 9, 2020: My first contribution to the Ploughshares Blog this year is on Kawabata’s harrowing short novel House of the Sleeping Beauties.
October/November/December
Upcoming: I’ll be contributing regularly to the Ploughshares Blog next year—about every other month, starting in January, and mostly on Japanese fiction. First subject: Kawabata Yasunari’s House of the Sleeping Beauties.
Saturday, December 14: “Thinking about fiction:” I’ll be talking about changing ideas of empathy in fiction at Alternative Realities: New Challenges for American Literature in the Era of Trump. It’s at The Clinton Institute, University College Dublin.
July/August/September
“I had never thought about the ethics of memoir for one very simple reason: I was not a memoirist.” My piece on the slippery, elusive morality of family memoir—including a celebrity interview with my mom—is up now on The Harvard Review Online.
I’ll be at The 1455 Summer Literary Festival in Winchester, Virginia, July 18-20—on the memoir panel, Family Matters, with Jeanne McCulloch, author of All Happy Families.
Time to sign up: I’m teaching a 4 week begin-your-memoir class at Catapult in NYC in July: Wednesdays 7-9, July 10-31.
April/May/June
"The US has a history of actively trying to keep politics out of literature.” I talk to the brilliant Johannes Lichtman about his novel Such Good Work in Scoundrel Time.
“The task of the writer is to bear witness.“ I interview the intrepid Roxana Robinson on her new novel, Dawson’s Fall—up now on Scoundrel Time.
Reading Pauline Kael at the equator: a new essay in The Normal School Online.
My friend Bill McGarvey, the only rock drummer/journalist I know of, has written the definitive analysis of the current college admissions scandal. Since I’m a college professor, I get to be quoted.
On April 11, by the miracle of video-conferencing, I transport myself to Lawrence University to talk about memoir. The irrepressible David McGlynn hosts.
I interview the border-crossing, multi-hyphenate Hong Kong writer Xu Xi about her new essay collection This Fish is Fowl—on Scoundrel Time.
January/February/March 2019
Criminals gets a prominent mention in an odd and wonderful article on Jewish biker gangs, “Hells Angels and Ridin’ Chai.” It’s by the journalist and comedian Harmon Leon.
Saturday, February 2, 2pm, Handley Library, Winchester, VA: Reading with the inimitable Karen E. Bender! Sponsored by the Virginia Center for the Literary Arts.
January 30, 6pm, Mulberry Street Branch of the New York City Public Library, 10 Jersey Street, NY NY 10012: I’ll be reading from Criminals.
October/November/December
Thursday, November 29, 7pm at the Visual Arts Center, Hollins University, Roanoke, VA: Writers Harvest Reading to benefit Feeding America Southwest Virginia. Donation: $10. I’ll be one of a dozen or so writers participating, including the inimitable Karen E. Bender.
An interview with Douglas Jackson at Book City Roanoke!
Reading with the amazing Karen E. Bender: Thursday, November 8 at 8:15 pm, Hollins University in Roanoke, VA—in the Hollins Room, Wyndham Robertson Library. Free and open to the public, as we like to say.
And then we do a Q & A together on Friday, November 9 at 11:00 am! Again, in the Hollins Room, Wyndham Robertson Library.
My essay “Psychedelic Family” is in Sonora Review 73, Frenzy Issue, out now.
My placebo saga, “Why I Take Fake Pills,” reprinted in Readers Digest Canada’s December issue.
Friday, October 5: I’ll be talking about memoir with the 11th graders at Avenues: The World School, in NYC.
Thursday, October 4 at 6:30 pm: I’ll be reading in NYC. The series is Prose Pros and the location is Sidewalk Cafe, 94 Avenue A at 6th Street, (212-473-7373). My reading partner is the marvelous writer and artist Roberta Allen.
“Hells Angels and Other Role Models:” a review of Criminals by Pete Tosiello in The Los Angeles Review of Books.
Somehow I missed it, but my article on placebo, originally in Smithsonian, was excerpted in Reader’s Digest this past summer.
July/August/September
Saturday/Sunday, August 4-5, I'll be teaching "Start Your Novel: A Weekend Bootcamp" at Catapult in NYC.
Thursday, July 26, at 7pm, I'll be part of the Scoundrel Time reading at Berl's Poetry Shop. The address is 141 Front Street, Brooklyn, NY, 11201. A dozen or so brilliant observers of the contemporary scene will participate, including Joan Silber, Mary Gaitskill, and the inimitable Karen E. Bender.
Monday, July 23, at 8pm, I'll be reading at Scribblers on the Roof. The address: Ansche Chesed, 251 West 100 Street, NY NY 10025. Teaming up with Kenneth Bonert, author of The Mandela Plot.
"Sometimes a father leaves his son no choice but to become a novelist." Criminals is reviewed by Alice B. Lloyd in The Weekly Standard.
Click here for a recording of my conversation with host Matt Katz about Criminals on "Midday on WNYC." This was on Thursday, July 19.
Biker documentaries and burning paper money for the dead: my essay "My Father, the Lawyer for the Hells Angels, is up on Electric Literature.
What to read this week? Newsday says Criminals!
Salvation, tenure, and various forms of imposture: my essay on writer's block and becoming a writer is up on Lithub.
Hells Angels, Phillip Larkin, fatherhood: I have an interview on Criminals up on Book Page.
"He was having seizures, I believed, little neurological explosions in his brain, and he was going to wake up impaired..." My essay "Choke" is up on the wonderful online magazine Epiphany.
April/May/June 2018
Betrayal, forgiveness, real estate: my essay "Homesteaders," is up on Ascent. Oddly, it's a complete rewrite of the version in my book Criminals. I had to give it one more try.
Exciting news: Turns out I'll be spending the 2018-19 academic year guest teaching in the MFA program at Hollins University. A beautiful campus, brilliant students, wonderful faculty, a great reading series, and very spicy Laotian food in a little place down a country road, next to a gas station. What more could anybody want?
January/February/March 2018
Friday, March 30, at noon, I'll be giving a talk at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia: "Seeing and Believing: Can Placebos Make You a Better Writer?" Part of the Writing Life Series at Hollins' wonderful MFA program.
Consulting on fiction and nonfiction projects through Catapult. Scroll down to the bottom of the consultants page to find me.
Video from many years ago, here for safekeeping: Reading AWBR at Authors@Google Series
Helped put together Scoundrel Time's 1st anniversary feature, "How it Ends." I have a piece there too, "Last Words."
October/November/December
Joined the masthead at Scoundrel Time, a literary magazine interested in the politics of every-day personal experience. I'm Editor-At-Large, looking for fiction and nonfiction that speaks to the strange present moment in our political life...
Wanderlust, a reading of travel writing from the MFA program at UNCW: Saturday, December 2nd at 6pm, at Pomegranate Books in Wilmington, NC.
I'll be reading from Criminals alongside the marvelous novelist Kristen Iskandrian, author of Motherest: Monday, October 30th at 7pm, University of North Carolina Wilmington. Part of UNCW's annual Writers Week extravaganza --which this year features Ross Gay...I'll also be on a panel discussing "The Ethics of Voice" and on the next day, a little something on writing prompts...
Friday, October 27, giving a talk on placebo and creativity at Hollins University, Roanoke, Virginia.
My essay collection Criminals, coming out in July 2018 from Counterpoint Press.
July/August/September
“A Crash Course in Japanese Poetry,” North Carolina Teaching Asia Network, September 30, 2017
Thinking of starting a novel this summer? I'm teaching a weekend workshop for those contemplating the plunge. Start Your Novel: A Weekend Bootcamp. It's at Catapult in New York City, August 5-6.
April/May/June
"Can Placebos Work If You Know They're Placebos?" In which I talk with Mary Louise Kelly on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday. Just hit play.
"Why I Take Fake Pills," my piece on creativity and placebo, out in the May issue of Smithsonian.
January/February/March 2017
Just stumbled on "Last Fragment from a Taiwan Notebook: Traffic, Turn Signals, Fate" in Fulbright Taiwan's Research and Reflections. The madness of Taichung traffic--or is it my own madness?...Below the text is a short video interview on Fulbright and the value of cross-cultural interchange. Very earnest, but I believe it all absolutely.
October/November/December
Ants marching up the wall as it thunders outside: my palm-of-the-hand essay "Night in Taiwan" is in Fourth River.
July/August/ September
Franz Kafka, Lenny Bruce, a Sephardic shul on Ocean Parkway, and a Brooklyn-born artist by the name of Archie Rand. My piece on this glorious tangle is up now on The Los Angeles Review of Books: "A God Who Let Us Prove His Existence Would Be An Idol: Archie Rand, “The 613,” and the Slippery, Vexing, Kafkaesque Problem Of the Jewish Visual Imagination."
How lovely to see my essay "Criminals," originally in The Paris Review, listed as a Notable Essay in the 2016 edition of Best American Essays, along with 99 other marvelous pieces by Michael Martone, Pamela Erens, Corinne Manning, Wendy Rawlings, and so many others.
March/April/May
When your work is translated into another language--it's like getting into a transporter and flashing across the globe. The current issue of the Iranian lit mag Hamshahri Dastan is out now with a translation of my little essay, "My Mother, My Writing Student," first in the NY Times. A huge thank you to the wonderful translator, Basir Borhani.
The Los Angeles Review of Books has a quarterly journal, too, (print only,) and the Winter 2016 edition is out now with my palm-of-the-hand memoir "Postcard."
December/January/February 2016
My essay "Gourmets," originally in Tin House, is out for another stroll--this time in the December issue of Utne Reader.
The 2016 Pushcart Prize anthology is particularly amazing this year, with work by Zadie Smith, Colum McCann, and Joanna Scott, among other great writers. And it doesn't hurt that my essay "Gourmets," originally in Tin House, gets a special mention.
"Love, Hunger, Memory," my graduate seminar in food writing, will be doing a public reading at Pomegranate Books in Wilmington, North Carolina, on Thursday, December 3 at 7 pm. Read class member Aurora Shimshak's blog post on the class experience. And Lydia Buchanan's post here. And come and join us if you're in town.
September/October/November
Tomatoes, possums, a blue heron, and other terrors of country living: all about our backyard in the new anthology 27 Views of Wilmington, out now...and including the irrepressible Karen E. Bender, Michael White, and Dana Sachs.
Punk rock icon, poet, novelist, luftmensch, wearer of extraordinary hats and Edwardian mustaches—I write about the British renaissance man Billy Childish on The Paris Review Daily...Billy Childish: I Just Paint.
My piece in The Paris Review Daily, "Vermeer in Manhattan," has found its true language: Dutch. Now out in 360 Magazine.
June/July/August
Rome, Tokyo, temple robbery, and the many uses of wigs…my essay "Criminals" is out in the fall issue of The Paris Review. That's the issue with memoir by James Salter and a new short story by Deborah Eisenberg.
The cross-pollination of writing and art at the Guggenheim: "I Think I Would Rather Be a Painter"--on The Paris Review Daily.
A gourmet food tour of France that goes strangely awry...a job guiding Japanese tourists through the labyrinths of Manhattan…My essay collection Criminals has been acquired by Counterpoint Press.
"Vermeer in Manhattan"--in which I visit all eight of the New York Vermeers with poet Michael White, on The Paris Review Daily.
I talk with poet and memoirist Michael White in The Los Angeles Review of Books: "Enigmatic Interiors: On Love, Death, Divorce, and Michael White’s New Travels in Vermeer"
March/April/May
Avant-garde trickster Terayama Shuji's fiction offers a world in which puppets fall in love and make their owners jealous, and talking birds learn the art of betrayal. My review of The Crimson Thread of Abandon is up now on Three Percent.
Author Spotlight for the O. Henry Prize Anthology up now...
Inmates in a Chinese re-education camp struggle to survive famine and each other in the years after the Great Leap Forward: my review of Chinese dissident novelist Yan Lianke's The Four Books is up now at The Rumpus.
Why is it that I love reading about travel even more than traveling? My UNCW travel writing seminar will be doing a group reading at Wilmington's Pomegranate Books on Friday, April 24 at 7 pm. Stop by if you're in town.
I love the dialogue in Chinese novelist Yan Lianke's Serve the People!, so when NOR asked me to write on dialogue, I went right to that wonderful book. "I Deserve Two Firing Squads: Dialogue and Conflict in Fiction" is out now in The New Ohio Review.
December/January/February 2015
A Japanese translation of "The Right Imaginary Person" is in the February issue of 英語で読む村上春樹,世界の中の日本文学 (Eigo de yomu Murakami Haruki--sekai no naka no Nihonbungaku), which accompanies the NHK radio show Rajiru-Rajiru….To see my story transformed into "正しい架空の人" (Tadashii kakuu no hito) was like stepping through a door into a dream. A huge thank you to Fujii Hikaru for an enormously sensitive translation and commentary.
September/October/November
"How Writers Write Fiction," a new online class offered by the University of Iowa, with video segments by lots of incredible writers—and me talking about haiku and “sea slugs, frozen in one clump.”
The 2014 O. Henry Prize Anthology is out now with my story "The Right Imaginary Person" from Tin House-- alongside pieces by William Trevor, Dylan Landis, Louise Erdrich, and a bunch of other amazing writers.
My essay "Unreliable Tour Guide," originally in the Winter issue of Ploughshares, was named a Notable Essay in the 2014 Best American Essays anthology.
June/July/August
A 13 year old kid on a food tour of France with three middle-aged ladies who can't get along: my essay "Gourmets" is out in the Fall issue of Tin House.
Everyone knows how vulnerable it can feel to show your writing in a workshop, but the truth is that it can feel vulnerable to teach a writing workshop too--especially when you have your mother in your class…My piece on this odd conundrum is out now in The New York Times.
March/April/May
Wednesday, May 21 at 7:20, I'll be giving a final presentation at the Foundation for Scholarly Exchange in Taipei: 2nd Fl., 45 Yanping S. Rd., Zhongzheng District, 中正區延平南路45號2樓, Tel. 02-2388-2100.
My short story, "The Right Imaginary Person," will be in the 2014 O. Henry Prize anthology, out this fall. It's a great collection of the year's short fiction, full of work by wonderful writers, including the extraordinary William Trevor.
Back to Tunghai High on Monday, May 5, for another haiku session!
Reprise visit to Dah-Yeh University on May 1st, this time to give a workshop on the uses of creative writing for English instruction. What better way to practice a language than to tell a story in it?
I'll be at Tunghai University Affiliated High School on Monday, April 28, teaching haiku to the 7th and 8th graders.
Bats, cobras, housepainters who use their ladders as stilts to walk around the room: "Fragments from a Taiwan Notebook" in the current edition of Fulbright Taiwan's Research and Reflections.
December/January/February 2014
Presentation at Dah-Yeh University, Taiwan, Tuesday, February 18 at 1:30. I'll try to distill my various confusions about narrative and the odd joys of the English language.
I talk with the wonderful Chinese novelist Yan Lianke in Bookforum about sex, socialism, banned books and poisoned ducks.
Have you ever found an old book and suddenly remembered the time in your life when you first read it? I write about that experience in the Winter issue of Tin House, out now.
"When I sat down to consider my marketable skills, I identified just three: I was good at trading raunchy jokes with drunken clergy; I knew how to make an open fan swoop and glide across a room; and I could speak Japanese...” I write about the mystery of employment for writers in "Unreliable Tour Guide," in the new Winter issue of Ploughshares, out now.
August/September/October/November 2013
My piece on Kawabata Yasunari is out in the Fall issue of Ploughshares: “Kawabata Yasunari: The Breeze in the Ink Painting."
A conversation with Karen E. Bender on love, politics, and the future of the novel--in Bookforum.
"The Right Imaginary Person" (Tin House, Winter 2012) is named a Notable Story in the 2013 edition of Best American Short Stories.
"Nothing that Wants to Run Away," on death, fatherhood, and our obsession with meat, out in The Harvard Review 44. In the same issue: a new short story from a favorite writer, Edith Pearlman.
Cats, marriage, Proust: a conversation with Peter Trachtenberg on his extraordinary new book, Another Insane Devotion--in Bookforum.