Tana Wojczuk

"Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night." — Philip K. Dick

Paste Resurrection

Posted on February 1st, 2011

On a recent visit to New York the ever-charming Charles McNair, Books Editor of Paste entertained guests at the sumptuous Jade Bar at the Gramercy Park Hotel where he let us know the good news that Paste Magazine will be continuing its excellent arts coverage online. The magazine made a name for itself by being a pioneer in the free music biz, offering free sampler cds of new music with every issue.  As the music has gone online so it seems natural that Paste as a music-focused magazine will too.

Women Make a Rumpus

Posted on January 11th, 2011

Lovely reading at Greenlight Books tonight by the Women of the Rumpus from Volume 1 (so called because they got so many submissions they plan to make a second volume) of their new book.

It’s a great compliation of new writing by women authors. Editors Julie Grecius and Elissa Bassist initially had to battle against the perception that literary writing by women wasn’t funny, but tonight’s reading showed clearly that even with material as dark as cancer, suicide and homelessness there are sparks of levity.  Indeed, as with an inverse proportion the darker the material the more lively the humor became.

A Whole New Ballgame

Posted on December 14th, 2010

The literary journal N+1 has an article in the latest issue called “MFA vs. NYC” in which it debates the rising value of MFA programs versus the New York publishing world, an education in itself. If being a writer in NYC means drinking a beer with Gary Shteyngart getting an MFA in NYC is like being a barmaid at Oktoberfest.  Joan Didion once wrote that when she grew out of girlhood the world was no longer full of eyes.  Graduating out of an MFA program can feel like passing beneath a statue and realizing her gaze was never fixed on you but on the horizon.

“Because I could not stop for community college, it kindly stopped for me.”

Posted on June 20th, 2010

Following a trail of breadcrumbs from my friend Liza Monroy’s website, I found William Bowers’ really exceptional essay “All We Read is Freaks” at The Rumpus.  Bowers writes about his childhood love of Dickinson and the heartbreak of grasping for poetry and finding it insufficient to inspire his community college students in Gainesville, Florida.  At the same time, Emily Dickinson’s poetry gives the author a framework, more permeable and yet with the same tensile strength as the religious admonitions that surrounded him in childhood and as a teacher with his own sad Southern Gothic.*

Mural of Emily Dickinson on a wall at West Cemetery in Amherst, Massachusetts where the poet is buried

*Apologies to Bowers, who comments on his distaste for the overuse–and misuse–of that word

Paste Feature: Carolina De Robertis’ Invisible Mountain

Posted on March 15th, 2010

Just posted in it’s entirety at Paste Magazine:

Profile of debut novelist Carolina De Robertis’ stunning novel, set in Uruguay and beyond. Carolina was a wonderful interview, we discussed, among other things, the ghettoization of Latin American authors into the “magic realism” genre.

Invisible Mountain was named one of the best books of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle and one of the ten best books of 2009 by O Magazine.

Reading Oct. 13th at the NYPL

Posted on September 29th, 2009

dreadThe New York Public Library is my Mecca and Medina, it’s the most gorgeous temple to literature I’ve ever seen (unless you count Nature, though would literature be a temple then to nature…hmm).  So to be reading there is a huge, huge thrill.  The reading series is called “Periodically Speaking” and it’s hosted by CLMP (Council for Literary Magazines and Presses) who asks editors from literary magazines to introduce emerging writers from their pages.  I’ll be reading from a piece upcoming in Tin House (Fall Issue, on the shelves Oct 1st). Come!

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