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In this Center for Fiction event, author Mariana Enriquez talks about the supernatural themes and local Argentinian language and humor within her short story collection A Sunny Place for Shady People (Hogarth, 2024) with translator Megan McDowell in a conversation moderated by Melissa Lozada-Oliva.
There are those who think John McTiernan’s 1988 film Die Hard is the farthest thing from a Christmas movie—an action-thriller blockbuster about a New York City police officer, played by Bruce Willis, who attempts to bring down a bunch of stereotypical villains holding his estranged wife and others hostage in a high-rise building in Los Angeles—while others passionately disagree, citing the fact that the film is set on Christmas Eve at an office holiday party with a soundtrack of seasonally appropriate Christmas songs. This week write a short story that occurs on the eve or day of a specific holiday, while subverting or upending conventions and expectations of the type of narrative usually attributed to this occasion. What conflicting themes and actions will you include in your blockbuster story?
Anthropomorphism refers to the behavior of projecting human attributes onto nonhuman animals and objects, while anthropodenial is a term that refers to an assumption of human exceptionalism and is a blindness to the humanlike characteristics of other animals. This week write a short story that includes both an incident of anthropomorphism and an incident of anthropodenial. You might decide to have one character whose perspective swings from one tendency to the other; or two characters who discover they have oppositional beliefs. Over the course of the story, is there a middle ground to be reached? How does someone’s beliefs about the differences between human and nonhuman animals connect to other aspects of their personality?
In this Brooklyn Book Festival virtual event, authors Hisham Matar, Rania Mamoun, and Omar Khalifah talk about the purpose and urgency of writing about history during times of crisis in a conversation moderated by writer and translator Yasmin Seale. Khalifah’s novel, Sand-Catcher (Coffee House Press, 2024), is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
The Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum and Educational Center at Arkansas State University offers a monthlong residency in June to poets, fiction writers, creative nonfiction writers, and translators in Piggott, Arkansas. Residents are provided with a loft apartment on the downtown square in Piggott, a $1,000 stipend to help cover food and transportation costs, and the opportunity to write in the studio where Ernest Hemingway worked on A Farewell to Arms in 1928.
Hemingway-Pfeiffer Writer-in-Residence Program, 1913 Museum Row, Piggott, AR 72454. (870) 598-3487. Adam Long, Executive Director.
In this virtual book launch event hosted by the Writer’s Center, Zahid Rafiq reads from his debut short story collection, The World With Its Mouth Open (Tin House, 2024), and discusses his experiences living in Kashmir in a conversation with Emily Fridlund. Rafiq’s book is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
