David Abrams's Blog, page 123

My First Time: Jeffrey Condran

My First Time is a regular feature in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands.  Today’s guest is Jeffrey Condran, author of Prague Summer , a novel which has just been released from Counterpoint.  He is also the author of the story collection, A Fingerprint Repeated .  His fiction has appeared in journals such as The Kenyon Review, The...

Sunday Sentence: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Simply put, the best sentence(s) I’ve read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.


All winter the Germans drive their horses and sledges and tanks and trucks over the same roads, packing down the snow, transforming it into a slick bloodstained ice-cement.  And when April finally comes, reeking of sawdust and corpses, the canyon walls of snow give way while the ice on the roads remains stubbornly fixed, a luminous, internecine network of invasion: a record of the c...

Friday Freebie: Painted Horses by Malcolm Brooks

Congratulations to Elizabeth Bevins, winner of last week's Friday Freebie: the Edward Falco prize package, which included the novels Toughs , Saint John of the Five Boroughs  and  Wolf Point , and the short story collection  Sabbath Night in the Church of the Piranha .


This week's book giveaway is Painted Horses , the debut novel by my fellow Montanan (and fellow Grove/Atlantic author) Malcolm Brooks.  Those of you who are regular patrons of my social media feeds are probably sic...

Soup and Salad: John Warner's Tough Day, Joan Didion's Rejection, Literary Maps, The Stories of Elizabeth McCracken & David Guterson, Ulysses the Video Game, 23 Contemporary Writers You Should Have Read By Now, The Saddest Poem Ever Written, Reading to a D

On today's menu:

1.  Earlier this summer, The Millions released its much-anticipated Most-Anticipated Books Preview (Second Half of 2014 Version) .  In that list, you'll certainly find some anticipation-worthy names: Richard Ford, David Mitchell, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Haruki Murakami, Denis Johnson, Laura van den Berg, and on and on the list goes.  One name not mentioned by The Millions: John Warner.  This is a shame because I, for one, am really looking forward to t...

Soup and Salad: John Warner's Tough Day, Joan Didion's Rejection, Literary Maps, The Stories of Elizabeth McCracken & David Guterson, Ulysses the Video Game, 23 Contemporary Writers You Should Have Read By Now, The Saddest Poem Ever Written, Reading to a D

On today's menu:

1.  Earlier this summer, The Millions released its much-anticipated Most-Anticipated Books Preview (Second Half of 2014 Version) .  In that list, you'll certainly find some anticipation-worthy names: Richard Ford, David Mitchell, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Haruki Murakami, Denis Johnson, Laura van den Berg, and on and on the list goes.  One name not mentioned by The Millions: John Warner.  This is a shame because I, for one, am really looking forward to t...

Soup and Salad: John Warner's Tough Day, Joan Didion's Rejection, Literary Maps, The Stories of Elizabeth McCracken & David Guterson, Ulysses the Video Game, 23 Contemporary Writers You Should Have Read By Now, The Saddest Poem Ever Written, Reading to a D

On today's menu:

1.  Earlier this summer, The Millions released its much-anticipated Most-Anticipated Books Preview (Second Half of 2014 Version) .  In that list, you'll certainly find some anticipation-worthy names: Richard Ford, David Mitchell, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Haruki Murakami, Denis Johnson, Laura van den Berg, and on and on the list goes.  One name not mentioned by The Millions: John Warner.  This is a shame because I, for one, am really looking forward to t...

Soup and Salad: John Warner's Tough Day, Joan Didion's Rejection, Literary Maps, The Stories of Elizabeth McCracken & David Guterson, Ulysses the Video Game, 23 Contemporary Writers You Should Have Read By Now, The Saddest Poem Ever Written, Reading to a D

On today's menu:

1.  Earlier this summer, The Millions released its much-anticipated Most-Anticipated Books Preview (Second Half of 2014 Version) .  In that list, you'll certainly find some anticipation-worthy names: Richard Ford, David Mitchell, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Haruki Murakami, Denis Johnson, Laura van den Berg, and on and on the list goes.  One name not mentioned by The Millions: John Warner.  This is a shame because I, for one, am really looking forward to t...

Soup and Salad: John Warner's Tough Day, Joan Didion's Rejection, Literary Maps, The Stories of Elizabeth McCracken & David Guterson, Ulysses the Video Game, 23 Contemporary Writers You Should Have Read By Now, The Saddest Poem Ever Written, Reading to a D

On today's menu:

1.  Earlier this summer, The Millions released its much-anticipated Most-Anticipated Books Preview (Second Half of 2014 Version) .  In that list, you'll certainly find some anticipation-worthy names: Richard Ford, David Mitchell, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Haruki Murakami, Denis Johnson, Laura van den Berg, and on and on the list goes.  One name not mentioned by The Millions: John Warner.  This is a shame because I, for one, am really looking forward to t...

Soup and Salad: John Warner's Tough Day, Joan Didion's Rejection, Literary Maps, The Stories of Elizabeth McCracken & David Guterson, Ulysses the Video Game, 23 Contemporary Writers You Should Have Read By Now, The Saddest Poem Ever Written, Reading to a D

On today's menu:

1.  Earlier this summer, The Millions released its much-anticipated Most-Anticipated Books Preview (Second Half of 2014 Version) .  In that list, you'll certainly find some anticipation-worthy names: Richard Ford, David Mitchell, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Haruki Murakami, Denis Johnson, Laura van den Berg, and on and on the list goes.  One name not mentioned by The Millions: John Warner.  This is a shame because I, for one, am really looking forward to t...

Soup and Salad: John Warner's Tough Day, Joan Didion's Rejection, Literary Maps, The Stories of Elizabeth McCracken & David Guterson, Ulysses the Video Game, 23 Contemporary Writers You Should Have Read By Now, The Saddest Poem Ever Written, Reading to a D

On today's menu:

1.  Earlier this summer, The Millions released its much-anticipated Most-Anticipated Books Preview (Second Half of 2014 Version) .  In that list, you'll certainly find some anticipation-worthy names: Richard Ford, David Mitchell, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Haruki Murakami, Denis Johnson, Laura van den Berg, and on and on the list goes.  One name not mentioned by The Millions: John Warner.  This is a shame because I, for one, am really looking forward to t...