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 At a time when young authors earn lavish advances for books about drinking or their wealthy parents, Anya Kamenetz stands apart. Her first work, Generation Debt: Why Now is a Terrible Time to Be Young is a serious book, seriously argued, about a serious subject. One of the youngest columnists for The Village Voice, Kamenetz rejects [...]

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Social observer extraordinaire Michael Flocker has written three well-received books on style, leisure, and our celebrity-obsessed culture. He brings a keen eye, a sharp wit, and an appreciated amount of sincerity to his work. While most other social commentators only want to poke fun, criticize and complain, Flocker intends for his work to benefit readers’ lives. The [...]

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 Mark Cuban is an extremely successful businessman, a popular sports franchise owner, and someone who isn’t afraid to question the status quo. Although his criticisms of the National Basketball Association and its referees attract the most attention, the fact is that Cuban seems like the type to question any authority and any convention if it can be improved. Beyond [...]

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For writers struggling to get an agent or a publisher, it’s almost too big of a dream to think of reaching the best-seller list. Now, think of being the top-selling author, in the world, for an entire decade. John Grisham reached that almost impossible pinnacle. He was the top-selling author of the 1990s, and including his work in this [...]

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Jay McInerney, literary chronicler of New York City, stood in his large window struggling with a broken shade. He wasn’t actually paying attention to the view–he’d seen it many times before: the wide expanse of water towers and fire escapes, the blossom of Wall Street, and the Twin Towers lurching out of the sea. Focusing [...]

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  A graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Writers, Marcy Dermansky has compiled an impressive list of credentials in a relatively short period of time. She won the 2002 Smallmouth Press Andre Dubus Novella Award and the 1999 Story Magazine Carson McCullers short story prize. Her work has been published in a number of prestigious literary [...]

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While crappy publicists get the attention (such as the poor soul who provided fodder for every book blogger by emailing folks about the greatness of Pamela Anderson’s new novel) and celebrity publicists get all the headlines (such as Lizzie Grubman’s automobile antics), the truth is that good publicists do a yeoman’s job in letting the [...]

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I have some pages ripped out of an old Playboy magazine. They’re a little brittle from age and from all the moving around I’ve done since this 1997 issue hit the newstand. Looking at those pages now, the ads and cartoons are amusing, and amazing at how much has changed in just 8 years. Ads [...]

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The setting sun against the cyclone wire fence casts a glare that momentarily blinds me as I open the envelope. It’s late afternoon, clocks are being punched out, and I hear car radios blare from the road as factory workers and pipe fitters screech out of warehouse parking lots. I see an old Camaro, once [...]

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Joe R. Lansdale is one of our most prolific writers. Author of twenty books, and more published short stories than my mathematically challenged brain can count, Lansdale effortlessly moves between the horror, science fiction, humor, western, and literary genres. I’ve only recently begun to delve into his immense pile of work and I think it [...]

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I recently spoke to an aspiring author who was obsessed with developing his “signature style.” This well-intentioned person knew that to make it in publishing, you have to present something different, something special. He kept referring to this something as his signature style. I suppose he saw it as his version of the secret sauce. [...]

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Administrator of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi, David Galef is a jack of all literary trades. Creative and hard-working, Galef is a pragmatist who understands the inner workings of literature. He takes a mechanical approach with his students, teaching fiction the way music is taught, by learning the small [...]

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