Caroline Leavitt's Blog, page 142

Let's hear it for book promos!

Every author wants his or her book to be noticed and many offer promos--bookmarks, t-shirts, and in this case, the coolest red baseball cap around from Joe Wallace to promote his uber-fantastic novel, Diamond Ruby.
Love the book, and LOVE the cap.

Guest blog from Danielle Ofri, author of Medicine in Translation

I'm thrilled to have Danielle Ofri guest blogging here. First, because her books are revelatory in terms of creating a narrative about healing, doctors, and patients. Secondly because my novel Pictures of You would not be here if it wasn't for Danielle and the Bellevue Literary Review who published portions of it, and awarded it a prize. Medicine in Translation is a fabulous read, chronicling Ofri's and her patients' journeys, as they navigate medical, cultural and religious divides...

Read this Book: Further Adventures in the Restless Universe by Dawn Raffel

I carried Dawn Raffel's Further Adventures in the Restless Universe around with me while I was reading it, because I couldn't let it go. Truly unlike anything I've read before (and it boasts a terrific cover by her son and a fabulous YouTube video), this book is still haunting me. Dawn's also the author of Carrying the Body and In the Year of Long Division, and she was kind enough to let me pepper her with questions. (Thank you, Dawn!)

Your writing is more like exquisite poetry than prose...

My office at Like Fire

Come take a look at artifacts in my office at the great blog LIKE FIRE.

On covers

Readers might not realize (writers know this all too well) that publication of a novel begins the second you get that acceptance. That's the honeymoon phase! Everything is wonderful! You feel flush with excitement because your baby is going to go out into the world, because what you've done is going to be alive and out there. You can stop worrying for a year or so because you sold your book!
Ha. No you can't. Because now comes the hard work.
I've spent a whole week filling out my author ...

Writing sparks

Recently, I've been so overwhelmed with other peoples' manuscripts, that I haven't had time for my own. It's hard for me not to be writing. I've felt cranky, and lost and moody and when I finally carved out some time to write last week, my novel-in-progress felt like a dead flounder on the page, which ramped up my despair level, as well as my need for chocolate. Why couldn't I write? What could I possibly do to work my way back into the writing zone?
But then, I began to finish up one...

Read This Book: Secrets of Eden by Chris Bohjalian

I have to begin by saying that Chris Bohjalian is possibly one of the funniest, most graciously kind people on the planet. In talking with him, I've discovered we both share a love of cupcakes, and we both love moral ambiguity in novels, which brings us to his remarkable new novel, Secrets of Eden. Chris won the New England Book Award in 2002, and his novel, Midwives, was a number one New York Times bestseller, a selection of Oprah's Book Club, a Publishers Weekly "Best Book," and a New...

Barnes and Noble without pity, and a city without a bookstore

When I first moved to Hoboken, what I loved was that it was an artsy city that was a subway stop (and 7 minutes) from Greenwich Village, that it was bustling and urban, full of brownstones and writers, and it had three bookstores. Not for long, of course because Barnes and Noble came in and forced them all out of business. But gradually, my family began to spend more and more time there. We loved hanging out, drinking tea, reading, buying books. When my son was born, we spent even more...

Read this Book: Devotion by Dani Shapiro

I first became aware of Dani Shapiro in her knockout memoir Slow Motion. I began reading everything she wrote, and following her career, because from Black & White to Family History, she was so fearless in her writing, so honest, that every page seemed to breathe. Dani's latest, Devotion: A Memoir, was one of those books I carried around with me for weeks after I read it. Her quest to find spiritual meaning in life was so intelligent and so moving, that I was gripping pages, and often in...

Read This Book: Dangerous Places by Perry Glasser

I first met Perry Glasser on Facebook. His book of stories, Dangerous Places, boasts blurbs from Bob Shacochis, Ron Hansen, Ron Carlson and more and he's the winner of the G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction. I picked up his book and was completed and thoroughly knocked out. His stories, about people on the edge of hope, are raw, gritty, extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read before. It's literally the best short story collection I've read. So, of course, I grabbed...