December 2004
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"And I suppose, they are historical novels to the extent that I believe all my books, without exception, take place in a specific timeframe of people who are very aware of their political surroundings. They’re people who know who their senator is, who know who their congressman is -- God knows they know who the president and vice-president are. They’re worldly people, they have some knowledge of the world. That said, historical novelist is the wrong term, because unless I’m forgetting something, I’ve never written a novel around a historical event. For example, the Kennedy assassination. An election. Nine-eleven. I’ve never taken a historical event and spun a novel around it."
by
John Detrixhe
"That’s the thing about the exhibitionism business, you can actually just say this is me. These are my fantasies or dreams or whatever, and then I just feel completely free of them. It’s impossible for me to feel judged in terms of the material. I can feel judged like crazy in the terms of the quality of it, am I a good writer or whatever, but just in terms of, God, aren’t you embarrassed by that fantasy or that sex scene or whatever, no, never."
by
Jessa Crispin
Sometimes your book cover critic feels exactly like Lewis Carroll’s Alice: “And what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversation?”
by
Sharon Adarlo
"For a while there, writing programs proliferated like rabbits on speed -- they were springing up everywhere and in the early ‘90s it seemed like you could get an MFA at 7/11, so the possession of an MFA became sort of a joke -- when applying for a job I would more often than not leave it off my resume. Experience on a forklift was far more desirable. Someone asked me recently if I still had my diploma and I told them I folded it into an unread copy of Infinite Jest, which I then sold at a yard sale for two dollars."
by
Geoffrey H. Goodwin
"The first two sections of the book are filled with war, death, disease, madness, addiction, squalor and poverty but the tour guide rarely plays those aspects up, preferring to put a genteel gloss on most of that (or merely accepting such as normal in life.) I thought it was only fair to remove the humor for a while and let Rouncival revel in all the terrible experiences of his young life. Though he’d become wealthy and famous, not much of the journey was ever easy for Rouncival, and it was time to give the devil his due.”
by
Colleen Mondor
"I just was confused and I wasn’t liking what I was writing. Now I think I have some expectations that were engendered during my gap. I know what I want to write. I know what I like. I can relegate doing money things with doing the things that I want to do. I kinda went unbalanced during the first go-round. I don’t know what expectations I have: hopefully, to make a living and to do some good work."
by
Adrienne Martini
