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Sierra Nevada Review
"Filling the blank page is agony." Daniel Kehlmann, author of Measuring the World (Pantheon, 2006), shares his feellings on first drafts and the joyful satisfaction of writing in longhand.
"I think the short story is fast, that it can say things that other forms can't say because it's not going to say them for long." Anne Enright, whose novel The Green Road (Norton, 2015) is longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize, talks to Vincent Woods about her interest in the short story form.
"The material for a novel is very often like tinder in your mind and in your heart, waiting for a spark to be thrown onto it." Andrew O'Hagan recounts the inspiration behind his newest novel, The Illuminations (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), which is longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize.
Steph Cha speaks about the noir works that influenced her writing and her choice to feature a female protagonist. Cha's novel Dead Soon Enough, the third installment in the Juniper Song series, was published yesterday by Minotaur Books.
In modern storytelling, a deus ex machina is a plot device in which a dramatic and oftentimes contrived occurrence suddenly saves the day or solves a seemingly impossible problem. This week, write a short story using this device in the form of a character, object, or newfound ability. How will you manipulate the pacing to create the most effective sense of surprise? Consider the tone of the story, perhaps incorporating tragedy and comedy, as you lead up to the unexpected turn of events.
“There is a particular contract that gets established between reader and writer.” Laila Lalami, whose novel The Moor’s Account (Pantheon, 2014) is longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize, discusses the intricacies and differences in writing fiction and nonfiction.
"I used to read a lot in terms of just the backs of toothpaste. I spent a lot of time reading ingredients and things like that, so there was probably also a fascination with words." Sunjeev Sahota talks about reading as a child and working on his second novel, The Year of the Runaways (Picador, 2015), which is longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.
"The reason she's legendary is that she has this work that is extremely weird... she wrote like nobody else." Benjamin Moser, editor of The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector, published by New Directions this month, talks with Open Letter Books publisher Chad Post about the appeal of Lispector's writing.
"The door closes slowly, I'm spinning way out of the city, out of my own body, out of his life forever." Eric Gamalinda's latest novel, The Descartes Highlands (Akashic Books, 2014), interweaves the stories of two men sold for adoption by their father.
