AltWeeklies Wire
Valerie Plame Wilson Discusses Her Memoir, FISA and Her Move to New Mexiconew
Valerie Plame Wilson's identity is no longer a secret. Five years and two lawsuits later, neither is her story. In her October 2007 memoir, Fair Game: How a Top CIA Agent Was Betrayed by Her Own Government, former agent Wilson chronicles how her life shifted from serving her country to suing her country.
Weekly Alibi |
Aeriel Emig |
07-29-2008 |
Author Profiles & Interviews
On October 27, 1962, the World Nearly Came to an Endnew
Much has been written about the ultimate crisis of the Cold War, but Michael Dobbs' account vividly captures the white-knuckled anxiety that gripped the White House and the Kremlin during those dark days.
NOW Magazine |
Howard Goldenthal |
07-28-2008 |
Nonfiction
Nila Gupta Creates Real, Distinct and Well-Developed Characters in Her Debut Fictionnew
In The Sherpa And Other Fictions, she looks at the places she's known as home and bravely zooms in on areas of possible contention: a woman modernizes her father's sweet shop while he's on his death bed, Toronto cops raid Bloor Station, a daughter resists an arranged marriage.
NOW Magazine |
Tara-Michelle Ziniuk |
07-28-2008 |
Fiction
'Free Ride' Dissects a Media Smitten With the McCain Mythosnew
Brock and Waldman hypothesize that the media, weary from covering a corrupt government and the self-centered politicians that are its lifeblood, suffers a hero-sized vacuum that needs filling. Enter McCain. After Clinton's semantics and Bush's chickenhawk warmongering, a straight-talking former POW cuts quite the dashing figure.
Artvoice |
Matthew Miranda |
07-25-2008 |
Nonfiction
Michael Ian Black Unleashes Some Essaysnew
It's a collection of short essays that often feel like blog posts; some of the pieces—such as "Hey, David Sedaris--Why Don't You Go Ahead and Suck It?" or "A Series of Letters to the First Girl I Ever Fingered"--are vaguely grounded in reality, while others are completely fanciful.
The Portland Mercury |
Ned Lannamann |
07-24-2008 |
Fiction
Submerged in Summer Reading: Seasonal Reads by Orlando-Area Scribesnew
Because it's been such a busy season of book releases, we grabbed a handful that had an Orlando connection and set to reading. Lo and behold, there was promise and perfection to be found among the titles.
Orlando Weekly |
Liz Langley, Bob Whitby and Lindy T. Shepherd |
07-24-2008 |
Books
Tags: summer reading, Pioneers, After Hours at the Almost Home, 100 Miles, 78 Days, and One Heck of an Adventure, and the Home Party, Earl Tupper, Hiking the Florida Trail: 1, Photography of Bruce Mozert, Silver Springs: The Underwater, The Fortuneteller’s Lay, The Year of Disappearances, Tupperware Unsealed: Brownie Wise, Two Pairs of Boots
Stella Pope Duarte Fights Femicide with Her Latest Booknew
When Duarte learned about the serial mutilation and murder of more than 400 young women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, since 1993, she knew she could not ignore it -- so she began If I Die in Juárez.
Tucson Weekly |
Kate Saavedra |
07-24-2008 |
Author Profiles & Interviews
Road Fatigue: The Beat Generation in the Rearview Mirrornew
Along with all the writers who come after them, I am indebted to the Beats for their invigoration of the arts, for shattering the molds and enlarging the realm of what can be printed, sung, painted, and said. There has been a progression since then, however. "Transgression," sometimes billed as the obligation of a true artist in the contemporary world, has become so widespread and predictable that it seems almost tame -- trendy transgressive, if you will.
The Texas Observer |
A.G. Mojtabai |
07-24-2008 |
Books
Mountain Migrant Rick Bass Tries to Explain Why He Left Houston for Higher Groundnew
The American West is a receding point, measured by imagination rather than sextant, and Bass has found it in a rugged stretch of 1 million acres whose human census -- 150 -- is outnumbered by each of several other species, including black bears, owls, elk, and coyotes.
The Texas Observer |
Steven G. Kellman |
07-24-2008 |
Nonfiction
Jonathan Miles' Epistolary Debut Gets Buried Under the Weight of its Own Baggagenew
Ultimately, Dear American Airlines is only as redeemable as its protagonist, which is to say, not very.
The Texas Observer |
Emily DePrang |
07-24-2008 |
Fiction
In James Rollins' New Novel, Prophets are Made, Not Bornnew
A Sacramento veterinarian before he became a novelist, Rollins has pondered the depth and breadth of scientific possibility and its ethical consequences.
East Bay Express |
Anneli Rufus |
07-24-2008 |
Author Profiles & Interviews
Tags: James Rollins, The Last Oracle
David Sedaris Continues with Un-Fiction in 'Flames'new
Sedaris, in addition to the previous charge of not being a journalist, is now also found guilty of being entertaining.
Charleston City Paper |
Jon Santiago |
07-23-2008 |
Nonfiction
In Catherine O’Flynn’s New Novel, Your Heart Breaks -- Eventuallynew
O'Flynn, author of What Was Lost, gives a pretty spot-on description of mall life. Green Oaks, the Birmingham shopping center detailed in the novel, is a nightmarish complex, and she gives an accurate insight on how suffocating it may be to work there long after you should have moved on.
Charleston City Paper |
Susan Cohen |
07-23-2008 |
Fiction
Stories about Stories: Kevin Brockmeier’s new story collection retells (relatively) new talesnew
Each of the 13 stories in The View from the Seventh Layer is some ingenius variation of narrative genre — there are four fables, a ghost story, an alien abduction story, a fantasy, a science-fiction romance, a situation comedy of sorts, and even a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure story.
Only a few of these breezy and sometimes elegant stories subscribe to that 20th-century dogma of short-story writing that Michael Chabon has called — in the tongue-and-cheek introduction to McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales — the “contemporary, quotidian, plotless, moment-of-truth revelatory story.”
Charleston City Paper |
John Stoehr |
07-23-2008 |
Fiction
Why It's Worth Reading and Re-Reading the Great Toni Morrisonnew
Long before Barack Obama forced us to re-think race, Toni morrison said it matters when it matters, it doesn't when it doesn't.
Charleston City Paper |
Consuela Francis |
07-23-2008 |
Books
