Ben Bush's Blog, page 2
August 31, 2016
CW 4745: The Sentence - Reading List
Getting Started:
Antonya Nelson “Short Story: A Process of Revision”
Steven Polansky “Legs”
Danielle Evans “Virgins”
Character:
Robert Boswell “How I Met My Wife”
Junot Diaz “Pura Principle”
The Onion “Ask an Elderly Black Woman as Depicted by a Sophomore Creative Writing Major”
Close 3rd-person narration:
James Wood, excerpt from How Fiction Works “Narrating”
Tobias Wolff “Bullet in the Brain”
William Trevor “Access to the Children”
Dialogue:
Charles D’Ambrosio “Open House”
Denis Johnson “Emergency”
Sonics:
Gary Lutz “The Sentence is a Lonely Place” (essay)
Christine Schutt “What Have You Been Doing?”
Barry Hannah “Water Liars”
George Saunders “My Chivalric Fiasco”
Ethics of Diction:
George Orwell “Politics and the English Language”
David Foster Wallace, “Consider the Lobster”
Excerpt from Infinite Jest “Why—Though in the Early Days of Interlace’s Internetted Teleputers…”
Flash fiction:
Grace Paley “Mother”
Excerpt from Claudia Rankine Citizen
Julio Cortazar “How to Climb a Staircase”
Lydia Davis “New Years’ Resolution”, “Head, Heart.”
Time, Pacing, Clocks:
Nicholson Baker, excerpt from Box of Matches
Aimee Bender “Marzipan”
Robert Coover “Going for a Beer”
Mimickry & “Authentic” texts:
Alejandro Zambra, excerpt from Multiple Choice.
Daniel Orozco “Officers Weep”
Excerpt from Julie Schumacher Dear Committee Members
George Saunders “Exhortation”
George Saunders, excerpt from “Semplica Girls Diary”
Erasures, Cut-Ups, Language Limitations
Matthea Harvey, Of Lamb
J. Robert Lennon, excerpt from “The Cat Text”
Joanna Ruocco, excerpt from Another Governess
Grab Bag: Long Sentences, Flagging, POV
Mathias Enard, excerpt from ZONE
Ray Bradbury, “A Sound of Thunder”
Z. Z. Packer, “Brownies”
Grab Bag: Use of Errors, Distinct Voices, Authentic Texts
Joshua Cohen, excerpt from Book of Numbers
T. Geronimo Johnson, excerpt from Welcome to Braggsville
Thomas Pynchon, excerpt from Crying of Lot 49
July 9, 2016
Profile of Louis Chude-Sokei on The Organist podcast (The Believer / KCRW)
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An interview I did with Louis Chude-Sokei has become a lushly produced episode of The Organist (from McSweeney’s / The Believer / KCRW). Per The Organist: “The Nigerian-Jamaican- American writer Louis Chude-Sokei on black cyborgs, black blackface, and the intersections of race, technology, and robotics.”
“A lot of the kinds of questions asked about artificial intelligence and robots: Can they think? Are they just mimics? Are they capable of original thought? Do they have souls? Can they have souls? These are the same questions that were asked about negro slaves.”
The Metaphysic of Dub: Podcast with Louis Chude-Sokei
An interview I did with Louis Chude-Sokei has become a lushly produced podcast episode from The Organist, a co-production of The Believer magazine and KCRW (NPR, Los Angeles). Per The Organist: “The Nigerian-Jamaican- American writer Louis Chude-Sokei on black cyborgs, black blackface, and the intersections of race, technology, and robotics.”
“A lot of the kinds of questions asked about artificial intelligence and robots: Can they think? Are they just mimics? Are they capable of original thought? Do they have souls? Can they have souls? These are the same questions that were asked about negro slaves.”
June 23, 2016
Sozopol Fiction Seminars & CapitaLiterature
I just returned from my time in Bulgaria as a Sozopol Fiction Fellow. Along with author Angel Igov, I co-moderated a panel discussion “For the Editing: With Love and Fear” featuring the legendary Barbara Epler, head editor at New Directions; Anna Kelly, commissioning editor at HarperCollins (UK); Anne Meadows, commissioning editor at Granta and Portobello Books (UK); author Georgi Gospodinov; and Manol Peykov, editor at Janet 45, a Bulgarian literary publisher of beautifully designed books in the McSweeney’s mold.
With seminars held in a cliffside art gallery on the Black Sea and two days of readings and panel discussions inside a 24-hour bookstore in the Palace of Culture in Sofia, Bulgaria, this was really one of the best run events I’ve ever attended. I was impressed by the kindness of our hosts, the talent of the Bulgarian writers, and the sense of community the program fostered. I particularly enjoyed a bilingual reading in Bulgarian and English in which fellows got to hear their work translated and read aloud by their peers. It was a genuine honor to be a part of all of this. Photos by, I think, Anthony Georgieff. To learn more visit the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation (EKF).
June 1, 2016
Bulgaria: Sozopol Fiction Fellowship
This June I’ll be in Bulgaria for the Sozopol Fiction Seminars through a fellowship generously provided by the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation. Five Bulgarian and five English-language writers will share workshops and seminars in Sozopol, a city on the Black Sea. This will culminate with the CapitaLiterature festival, a series of readings and panel discussions held in Sofia. It’s an honor to attend and I’m looking forward to it.
April 27, 2016
Can you bring a gun to the GOP debates?
[image error]Salon about “The GOP’s mind-blowing gun-control hypocrisy: Americans have the right to bear arms — except at our debates!” It was interesting to talk to Republican party organizers and Tea Party advocates. Also, the specifics of bringing guns to the debates revealed plenty of other oddness.
“Can you bring a gun to the GOP debates?”
I wrote a piece for Salon about “The GOP’s mind-blowing gun-control hypocrisy: Americans have the right to bear arms — except at our debates!” It was interesting to talk to Republican party organizers and Tea Party advocates. Also, the specifics of bringing guns to the debates revealed plenty of other oddness.
“I am still owed one goddamn riot”
I interviewed Camden Joy / Tom Adelman for Bookforum about narcocorridos, writing in persona, and rock managers beating people with sacks of quarters.
August 18, 2015
“I am still owed one goddamn riot”
I interviewed Camden Joy / Tom Adelman for Bookforum about narcocorridos, writing in persona, and rock managers beating people with sacks of quarters.
August 6, 2015
“Can you bring a gun to the GOP debates?”
I wrote a piece for Salon about the GOP candidates’ hypocritical stance about their own safety compared to the rest of us.
