The Book of Speculation
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Erika Swyler's debut novel, published by St. Martin's Press, features mermaids, drownings, tarot cards, and a librarian who uncovers mysteries about his family.
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Theater video tags: 2015
The Sunlit Night
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This animated trailer for Rebecca Dinerstein's debut novel, The Sunlit Night (Bloomsbury, 2015), was created by Jonty de Klerk. Read more about Dinerstein in “First Fiction 2015" in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, and catch her tour in the Reading Tour Manager.
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László Krasznahorkai
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"I give my thanks to Franz Kafka whose novel Das Schloss [The Castle] I read when I was twelve years old… I believe my fate was sealed." Hungarian fiction writer László Krasznahorkai gives his acceptance speech for the 2015 Man Booker International Prize last month.
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The Book of Aron
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"My father said they should have named me What Have You Done." The opening lines of Jim Shepard's novel The Book of Aron, published by Knopf, are featured in this animated video by Drew Roberts.
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The Hopeful
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Tracy O'Neill's debut novel, published by Ig Publishing, explores the life of a sixteen-year-old ice skating prodigy after a traumatic injury. O'Neill is one of the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 for 2015.
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Hold Still
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"I was hoping for scandal and deceit, alcoholism, domestic abuse, car crashes, racial complications... and I found all of it." Photographer Sally Mann reflects on her family history and how old letters, photographs, and journals in her attic inspired her memoir, Hold Still, published by Little, Brown this month.
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David Shields and Caleb Powell Quarrel
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David Shields and Caleb Powell, coauthors of I Think You're Totally Wrong: A Quarrel (Knopf, 2015), enjoy a colorful discussion while riding a ferris wheel in a video from the Los Angeles Review of Books. For more on Shields and Powell, watch their appearance at the Poets & Writers Live event in San Francisco.
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The Small Backs of Children
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"What is a girl but this? This obscene and beautiful making, this brilliant imagination inventing meaning." Lidia Yuknavitch's novel The Small Backs of Children is forthcoming from Harper in July.
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Kate Atkinson
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"It's not the duty, but it's certainly the pleasure of a novelist to recreate their imagination and the stories that are lost." Kate Atkinson speaks about her latest novel, A God in Ruins (Little, Brown, 2015), which tells the story of a Royal Air Force pilot in World War II and his postwar family life.
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Elizabeth Alexander
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"I think that in writing, we do try to fix moments so that somehow they're captured." Elizabeth Alexander speaks with PBS NewsHour's Jeffrey Brown about the loss of her husband and her experiences in writing her new memoir, The Light of the World (Grand Central Publishing, 2015).
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