Rebecca Barry, an Ohio State University MFA who has published both fiction and nonfiction in many of the right places, debuts with a “novel in stories.”
Author Archives: Robert Birnbaum
I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon, by Crystal Zevon
Most music biographies are useful to fans and devotees but frequently are barely more than hagiographic efforts.
Richard Ford on The Lay of the Land
“You can’t really make the world up–make something more zany than the world is. So, I mean I can’t make anything up that isn’t already superseded by something that already is.”
Posted in Author Interviews Tagged Buddhism, Novelists, Richard Ford, Robert Birnbaum, The Lay of the Land
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Donald Hall
Even before he was named Poet Laureate of the United States in June 2006, Donald Hall was a familiar figure in contemporary poetry.
Posted in Author Interviews Tagged Donald Hall, Poet Laureates, Poets, Robert Birnbaum
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Michael Lewis on The Blind Side
The Blind Side is an incredibly moving story about the remarkable reversal of fortune Michael Oher, a 6’5″, 350-pound, feral sixteen-year-old black boy from inner-city Memphis, encounters as he is adopted by a wealthy white Evangelical family.
Posted in Author Interviews Tagged Football, Journalists, Michael Lewis, Moneyball, Robert Birnbaum, The Blind Side
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Elizabeth Benedict
John Gimlette
August 16, 2006: “The worst violators of nature…”
The worst violators of nature and human rights never go to jail. They hold the keys. In the world as it is, the looking-glass world, the countries that guard the peace also make and sell the most weapons. The most prestigious banks launder the most drug money and harbor the most stolen cash. The most […]
Eduardo Galeano
“The richest people are suffering fear in such a proportion they cannot imagine life without this panic of being kidnapped and feeling that people hate them or I don’t know—it must be terrible.”
Posted in Author Interviews Tagged Eduardo Galeano, Robert Birnbaum, The Book of Embraces
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June 27, 2006: “Once again the New York Times…”
Once again the New York Times seems to have roiled the literary pond, provoking, depending on your disposition, screeches of indignation or snarls of ridicule. The occasion for the rising noise level being the lame-assed (I guess I am tipping my hand here) attempt to name the best American novel of the past 25 years. […]
Susan Orlean on Rin Tin Tin
Posted in Author Interviews Tagged New Yorker, Rin Tin Tin, Robert Birnbaum, Susan Orlean, The Orchid Thief
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George Saunders
“It’s amazing how the pleasures of the language and the pleasures of the physical world are one and the same thing.”
Posted in Author Interviews Tagged George Saunders, In Persuasion Nation, Robert Birnbaum
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Julia Alvarez
“There is shit everywhere. The language itself gets muddled and used dishonestly. For me the way to clean the windshield is through writing, which goes hand in hand with reading.”
Posted in Author Interviews Tagged Essayists, Julia Alvarez, Novelists, Poets, Robert Birnbaum, Vermont Writers
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William Wright
“Yeah, it was a tempest — a hidden tempest. But it ruined a lot of lives and precipitated three suicides.”
Posted in Author Interviews Tagged Editors, Harvard's Secret Court, Robert Birnbaum, William Wright
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Thomas Beller
“The whole culture of coaching and prepping and that sort of intense PR stuff, how to talk on TV and the radio, is disgusting as it applies to a real person, to writers.”
Posted in Author Interviews Tagged Editors, Essayists, How to Be a Man, Novelists, Robert Birnbaum, Thomas Beller
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