author
Recipe Corner
Here are some suggested dishes to accompany the stories in the 2013 Fiction Issue, directly from a few of the authors who wrote them.
A Teacher and Her Student
Marilynne Robinson was my fourth and final workshop instructor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. After receiving my MFA this May, I left Iowa believing that there’s no good way to be taught how to write, to tell a story. But there is also no denying that...
Taipei Metro
For the past couple of months, in celebration of last week's release of Tao Lin's latest novel, Taipei, we have been featuring a weekly selection of photos taken by the author during his recent trip to Taipei, Taiwan. In the final installment...
Thought and Memory
Back in 2008, when my first novel, 'A Tree Grows in Baghdad,' came out, my publisher sent me on a West Coast tour. Sometimes folks came out in droves, sometimes they didn’t. It was great to see my public, regardless. I found I liked signing books. I...
Bryan Garner
He was David Foster Wallace’s favorite grammarian, and that, for savvy grammar fascists under the age of 40, is like a recommendation from Jesus.
Sam Lipsyte
2010 was when fiction critics decided to finally give Sam Lipsyte the two-fingered whistles he deserves.
Amy Hempel
Together with writers like Raymond Carver, Barry Hannah, and Mary Robison, Hempel has been canonized both into the “golden age” of the short story and as a minimalist writer.
Mary Karr
Karr handles gruesome experiences with such compassion, charm, lyricism, vividness, and mordant comedy that the work transcends mere horror story or freak show. Her storytelling melds scrappy Texas slang with poetic precision and is totally addictive.
John Rechy
John Rechy’s City of Night remains, almost 50 years later, the essential novel of the neon-drowned world of rough-trade hustlers, 24-7 drag queens, and the gentlemen who crave them.
Bret Easton Ellis
Over the course of six novels and one book of short stories, Bret Easton Ellis has put together one of the most entertaining, fascinating, and fucked-up bodies of work in contemporary literature.
Max Brooks
Anybody who cares about the state of the world and what happens to people when disease and wars happen should read World War Z by Max Brooks. It’s a fictional oral history of “the zombie war.”
Candy-Coated
CM3 (as he likes to be called, which is kind of dumb) is one of the top “weirdos” in the “bizarro” fiction “world.”