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In this 2014 Louisiana Channel interview from his home in Brooklyn, Paul Auster talks about how a chance meeting with legendary baseball player Willie Mays led him to become a writer and what he has learned about writing. “The essence of being an artist is to confront the things you’re trying to do, to tackle it head on, and if it’s good, it will have its own beauty.” Auster died at the age of seventy-seven on April 30, 2024.
The author of I’ll Give You a Reason contemplates the common ground between a joke and a short story.
“The task of the novelist, I think, consists of treating life as a research project.” —Nicolás Medina Mora
Directed and cowritten by Ethan Hawke, Wildcat is a film based on the short stories and letters of Flannery O’Connor and explores both her characters and her life. Starring Maya Hawke and Laura Linney, the film dramatizes some of O’Connor’s most famous short stories and delves into the author’s craft and faith.
The term sub rosa means “under the rose” in Latin and refers to something said or done in private. The rose has been associated with secrecy since ancient times, a decorative symbol often carved and painted in places like meeting rooms, banquet halls, and confessionals as reminders of confidentiality. This week write a short story that revolves around a conversation or discussion that occurs sub rosa in an enclosed space. Does a certain detail get leaked out or overheard? How might the secretive nature place a burden on your characters? Consider the ways in which the atmosphere and tone of your story feel distinctive in the time and space of your sub-rosa conversation versus the scenes that take place before or after the talk.
The author of I’ll Give You a Reason explores how setting shapes characters.
Watch this sneak peek of the first screen adaptation of Gabriel García Márquez's masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude. The Spanish-language series was filmed in Colombia with support from the author’s family and is written by José Rivera, Natalia Santa, Camila Brugés, María Camila Arias, and Albatrós González. The multi-generational tale follows the Buendía family and tells the story of the founding of the mythical town of Macondo.
In honor of Earth Week, write a scene that revolves around a character who experiences an unexpected moment in a natural environment that produces a sensation of wonder, perhaps an unusual encounter with wild flora or fauna. You might contrast the elements of this scene with others in your story in which the character is interacting solely with humans or only attuned to the sounds, rhythms, and sights of city life and densely packed civilization. Is the occurrence mind-bogglingly quick and then reflected upon in hindsight, or does time slow down in the scene? How do you manage or manipulate the pacing and rhythm of your prose to draw attention to the emotional and psychological response of the character?
“You’ve got one idea that excites you, and all these other ideas start to kind of come out of it.” In this Sligo County Libraries event, award-winning author Paul Murray discusses the middle-class challenges of the characters in his latest novel, The Bee Sting (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023), in a conversation with Colm Tóibín.
In “Table for One,” a short story from Korean author Yun Ko-eun’s new collection of the same name, translated by Lizzie Buehler and published by Columbia University Press in April, a surreal quality seeps into the tale of a lonely office worker who enrolls in a course to make solitary dining easier. Tips from the course include: “Target corner tables rather than those in the middle. Seats at the bar are also good. Hang your coat or bag on the chair facing you and take advantage of tools like a book, earphones, a cell phone, or a newspaper.” The fantastic element of the story lies less in the oddity of the premise than in the narrator’s meticulously recounted neuroses and detailed rendering of processes that become seemingly cyclical. Write a scene that focuses on your character’s minute observations as they attempt to overcome something debilitating. Does the situation lend itself to a quirky or dark sense of humor?
