Thursday, October 30, 2008

Whiting Award Winners

From Publisher's Lunch:

This year's Whiting Awards, worth $50,000 each, for "writers of exceptional talent and promise in early career," have gone to:

Mischa Berlinski, fiction
Rick Hilles, poetry
Donovan Hohn, nonfiction
Douglas Kearney, poetry
Laleh Khadivi, fiction
Manuel Munoz, fiction
Dael Orlandersmith, plays
Benjamin Percy, fiction
Julie Sheehan, poetry
Lysley Tenorio, fiction

Congratulations to all! The Normal School has had its eye on Donovan Hohn for some time now...

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Q&A with Los Angeles novelist Nina Revoyr

Q&A with Los Angeles novelist Nina Revoyr

By: TNS editorial intern, Olivia Muñoz

NINA REVOYR is the author of “The Necessary Hunger,” and “Southland.” Her latest book, “The Age of Dreaming” follows the story of a Japanese silent film star who looks back on a career that ended abruptly during the changing social and racial tides in California in the 1920s. In the “The Age of Dreaming,” the story fallows the character back and forth between the 1960s and the height of the silent film era as he deals with the death of his favorite director, tries to please both his Japanese and American fans, and comes to terms with his past.

OLIVIA MUÑOZ: You are inspired by real people, and incorporate places and history into your novels. Tell me a little bit about your research process: do you dig first and then write? Or do you write as you go along?

NINA REVOYR: I use real life situations in my first two books, but as really use real life as jumping off points only. I don’t look to tell those stories, but instead let them trigger a work of fiction. In “The Age of Dreaming,” what was important to me was that there really was at one point a silent film star of color – not only a star but a sex symbol. In my book, the story deals with what fame costs my character, Jun Nakayama, personally. Real life gave me permission to create that character but I very consciously stop at an early point of getting interested in a subject. So, something will spark, I’ll stop, and then research to fill in any holes.

OM: What hooks you?

NR: An issue or theme that is intriguing enough to sustain me for the years it takes to write a book. For example, in “Southland,” I was interested in the organic mix of African-American and Asian residents of a Los Angeles neighborhood. I remember very vividly as a kid hearing about killing during the Watts riots – hearing people actually brag about killing kids. So, race dynamics are interesting to me.

“The Age of Dreaming” came about because I work in a building that has some silent film history. After learning more about that, and about a real life Japanese silent film star, I began to explore the question of what happens to someone when they don’t do what they were supposed to do in their life.

OM: Was that a question you were grappling with? How much of your work is you?

NR: I think it is all autobiographical in a sense. I was dealing with being a writer, and whether I wanted to continue doing that, and what that would take. “The Age of Dreaming” is my most autobiographical work to date even though I’m obviously not a 73-year-old man, not a former silent film star – but all of my concerns and obsessions are the same. I was dealing with making the right choices, creative blocks, and it was easier to address those themes in a work of fiction than any other way.

OM: You deal with the interplay of race in your novels. Is that something you feel you will continue to touch on in the rest of your career?

NR: Absolutely. The book I am working on now is set in the Midwest and deals with race quite directly. I spent my childhood years in Wisconsin thinking about those years – and even looking at election news coverage now – I am surprised at what people are willing to say.

OM: You’re often praised for your portrayal of male characters. What helps you write from that point of view? Is it difficult for you?

Thank you for saying that. No, I don’t find too difficult. I was raised by a single dad and my grandfather is my hero. I think my love for my grandfather comes through in “The Age of Dreaming,” for sure. I grew up surrounded by men and knew them as nurturers.

People do comment on the accuracy with which I depict men’s relationships and their silly mistakes with women. Being gay, I know something about making mistakes with women.


OM: On Oct. 30 you’ll be visiting us here at Fresno State, which offers a MFA in Creative Writing. What kind of advice would you give to aspiring writers?

NR: Read as much as you can. Write as much as you can. I know that sounds simple, but that’s really it. There are no excuses – you can say, “I’m too busy,” but if you really need to write and want to write, you’re going do it.

Also, being in an MFA program is a very unique experience. Create a community that is portable – take relationships with you. You need that support and it’s not always there once you’re done with school.

Also – this is going to sound cheesy, but it’s true – write for yourself. Frankly, there’s no guarantee for what’s going to happen on the publishing end, so you’ve got to take your joy from the process.

NINA REVOYR will do a Q& A at Fresno State on Thursday, Oct. 30, at 3 p.m. in Alice Peters Conference Room (PB 194) and then do a reading later that evening at 7 p.m. in Alice Peters Auditorium (PB 191). Parking is available in the UBC Lot.

http://www.ninarevoyr.com/

Friday, October 17, 2008

TNS Editor Acquires Notability

Our esteemed editor Steven Church's essay "I'm Just Getting to the Disturbing Part", from the Fall 2007 issue of Fourth Genre, has been been selected as a Notable Essay by Robert Atwan for Houghton Mifflin's Best American Essays 2008.

Fourth Genre

Dinty Moore is the Grubbiest!

TNS #1 Contributor Dinty Moore wins the 2008 Grub Street National Book Award in Nonfiction. You can read Dinty's "44 Reasons Why You Should Absolutely, Positively Never Write That Book" in our newly minted inaugural issue. Congratulations, Dinty!

www.grubstreet.org

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Juan Felipe Herrera on NPR's OnPoint

TNS #1 contributor Juan Felipe Herrera is featured today on NPR's On Point.

OnPointradio.org

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

National Book Award Finalists

From Publisher's Lunch:

National Book Award Finalists
Fiction nominees range from the 81-year-old Peter Matthiessen for a book the AP calls "an 890-page revision of a trilogy of novels he released in the 1990s" to debut novels from Rachel Kushner and Salvatore Scibona. The winners will be named November 19:

Fiction
Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project (Riverhead)
Rachel Kushner, Telex from Cuba (Scribner)
Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country (Modern Library)
Marilynne Robinson, Home (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Salvatore Scibona, The End (Graywolf Press)

Nonfiction
Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf)
Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (W.W. Norton & Company)
Jane Mayer, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals (Doubleday)
Jim Sheeler, Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives (Penguin)
Joan Wickersham, The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order (Harcourt)

Poetry
Frank Bidart, Watching the Spring Festival (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Mark Doty, Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems (HarperCollins)
Reginald Gibbons, Creatures of a Day (Louisiana State University Press)
Richard Howard, Without Saying (Turtle Point Press)
Patricia Smith, Blood Dazzler (Coffee House Press)

Young People's Literature
Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains (Simon & Schuster)
Kathi Appelt, The Underneath (Atheneum)
Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied (Scholastic)
E. Lockhart, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (Hyperion)
Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now (Alfred A. Knopf)

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Normal is Now!!

Hey Normal People,

TNS#1 has hit the pavement or the newstands or the hands, backpacks, pockets (really big ones), bathrooms and briefcases of America. Yes, America. We're an American magazine. Or something. But I'm telling you, this thing is so beautiful. When I opened my office door to find 31 boxes piled up against the back wall, the whole room smelled like magazine--that kind of wet, inky smell that sometimes, if you bury your nose in the binding, can remind you of the ditto machine in Mr. Dillehay's 4th grade class, his toupee, and the way he flapped his arms in a yellow shirt to the "Chicken Dance" song on LP . . . Or something like that. If you can't get your hands on one (and we're working hard to make that happen), go to the website www.thenormalschool.com and subscribe. We'll send you a copy. You'll love it. You're children will love the art. Tell them there's a 3-headed chicken fighting a grasshopper somewhere in the magazine and they'll dive right in . . . tell them to "find everything abnormal" in the picture of idyllic farm life and it will entertain them for hourse on airplanes . . . Or not. But you will love what you read in these pages. I promise. You will laugh. I can almost guarantee that . . . Just trust me. Subscribe. Read. Pumas.

SWC

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Nobel Prize for Literature goes to Le Clezio of France

While The Normal School congratulates M. Le Clezio, it is interesting to note that much of the discussion this week about why NOT an American hinged on the fact that only a relatively small amount of American writers' work finds its way into translation.

Yet, Publisher's Lunch reports that "Very few of [Le Clezio's] works are currently available in US editions, though the NYT says that 12 of his 40 works have been translated at some point. Among them, the University of Nebraska Press published The Round and Other Cold Hard Facts in 2003, and Onitsha in 1997; Curbstone Press published Wandering Star in 2004. But Agence France Presse assures that he 'is one of the French writers best known outside his country and one of the most wide-ranging in his choice of subject matter. He is an avid traveller, and his fictions are as likely to be set in Mexico or the Sahara as in Paris or London.' He lives part of the year in New Mexico and is reported to have taught at the University of New Mexico."

www.nytimes.com

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Good News about our Normal Friends

UNO Writer-in-Residence Joseph Boyden nominated for Canada's Giller Prize. Congratulations, Joseph!

http://www.nationalpost.com/arts/story.html?id=866176

Monday, October 6, 2008

TNS#1 Contributor Ron Rash in NY Times, y'all!

Hey All,

Check out Janet Maslin's review of TNS#1 Contributor, Ron Rash's new novel, Serena.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/books/06masl.html?_r=1&ei=5070&emc=eta1&oref=slogin

I think that makes 2 contributors in the NY Times Recently. How you like 'dem apples?

-- SWC