Christopher Meeks's Blog, page 25
May 13, 2009
Meeks's Book “MONTHS AND SEASONS” Makes List for the Frank O'Connor Award
My most recent short story collection Months and Seasons is up for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. It's a prize from Ireland, the most lucrative short story award around, which Jhumpa Lahiri won last year for Unaccustomed Earth. Leading names on this year's list include Booker winner Kazuo Ishiguro, Orange Prize winner Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, winner of the (British) ...
May 10, 2009
THE SECRET OF WRITING
Book writers are funny creatures. Don't we all wish we knew the secret to writing--the one thing we'd follow to make us successful every time at bat? We all MEAN to write great, engrossing, passionate books, and we certainly EXPECT to finish them--just like we truly plan to follow through with our new year's resolutions. Writers often don't finish projects (or resolutions) well, though. Why? I ...
May 8, 2009
"Who's Hungry?"
For the last eight years, I’ve taught “Story for Animators” at CalArts. It’s been a wonderful challenge for me, a fiction writer and instructor, to teach to animators, but the way I’ve looked at it is that story is story. My students have been teaching me, too, how to draw. The attached drawing is mine.Last night, I attended the year-end CalArts character animation Producer's Show. ...
May 6, 2009
SHAKING CALIFORNIA: AUTHOR DAVID ULIN
I've been asked by the Santa Monica College Literary Series to speak about my work on December 1. I'm part of a series of authors who discuss what they do and read from their work. The events are free and open to the public. The director of the series, English professor Hari Vishwanadha, asked me for the title of my presentation, which suggests that, like all good speakers, I should have a ...
April 29, 2009
"Festival of Books" panel video
My wife, Ann Pibel, ever the fantastic researcher, found that the Festival of Books panel, "About Reading," which I wrote about earlier this week, was shot by C-SPAN. You can see the sixty-minute discussion at http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_... whole thing about video, and recently hearing about ...
April 27, 2009
THE RECENT "FESTIVAL OF BOOKS" AT UCLA
The air was as clear as aquavit, blue sky over a green Los Angeles, thanks to the winter rains. A cleansing and cool breeze of sixty-eight degrees blew all day, which made for a perfect time to be outdoors at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. The weekend event, spread across UCLA's city of a campus in April of each year, is free, with booths made of white tents. Performance stages are ...
April 25, 2009
THE CHANGING FACE (Part Two)
My blog yesterday drew a healthy response, which is great to see. The panel presented a snapshot of the way things are in publishing presently but also avoided two key realities. One is that business-as-usual is just not working. Independent bookstores are falling like buffaloes in the Old West. Even chains are having problems--long gone are B. Dalton and Waldenbooks, once mainstays, and Borders ...
April 24, 2009
THE CHANGING FACE OF PUBLICATION
Last night I attended a panel at USC entitled "The Changing Face of Publication," hosted by one of my favorite novelists, Gina Nahai (Cry of the Peacock). The five panelists, with five different jobs and all deeply involved in publishing, offered a view on how publishing is done now and where the industry is and is not going. The latter was the most important, which, to authors reading ...
April 21, 2009
ANIMATOR JULES ENGEL @ 100
One of the great inspirations in my life was experimental animator Jules Engel, best known for his work on Disney's Fantasia and Bambi, as well helping develop Mr. Magoo and some of the first animated series on television, Gerald McBoing-Boing and Alvin and the Chipmunks. When I started at CalArts in 1987, I knew him as the director of the Experimental Animation program. He always dressed ...
April 18, 2009
I've Been A Bruce Springsteen Fan, But...
I've been a Bruce Springsteen fan for years, but I perhaps didn't understand his music completely, fully, and utterly until I saw him recently in concert on April 15th in Los Angeles. I'd seen him in concert eight times previously, starting in 1984 at the Los Angeles Sports Arena. He'd always delivered great concerts. Some fans in line last year when I saw him in Anaheim told me how they'd seen ...
