Christine Sneed's Blog, page 4
January 20, 2017
Stories: Inaugural Blog Post on Inauguration Day
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about ambition, happiness, fear, disappointment, and how they figure into the lives of writers. When things are going well, all seems charmed and bright; when nothing is happening or else you’re being buffeted by disappointments big and small, the outlook feels a lot more bleak—fraught with thunderheads, traffic jams, and internal magpies hurling insults about your creativity, marketability…well, to be frank--your overall viability as a contributing member of our mercurial literary community.
In view of the new administration taking over the White House and all other branches of the U.S. government today, I think millions of people feel debilitating uncertainty about the future. I certainly do. More than ever, I wish our leaders would take to heart this Buddhist precept: Think 9 times before you speak.
2016 was a busy year – a lot of teaching and writing, and my fourth book, The Virginity of Famous Men, was published in September 2016 in the US, November 2016 in the UK (both by Bloomsbury). It’s a short story collection and was sold in a two-book deal with my third book, the novel Paris, He Said, back in what look to me now to be the relatively carefree times of July 2013.
You hear often that story collections are the unwanted children of the publishing world, and there are plenty of readers who aren’t too interested in them either. But they’re a terrific literary form, and probably my favorite of all prose forms, as both writer and reader.
These are a few of the collections I’ve enjoyed intensely over the last several or so years. (A couple of the following might technically be classified as novels or novels-in-stories).
Runaway, Alice Munro
All Aunt Hagar’s Children, Edward P. Jones
A Relative Stranger, Charles Baxter
My Life in Heavy Metal, Steve Almond
Stop That Girl, Elizabeth McKenzie
Faulty Predictions, Karin Lin-Greenberg
The Bigness of the World, Lori Ostlund
The Jungle Around Us, Anne Raeff
Twilight of the Superheroes, Deborah Eisenberg
American Salvage, Bonnie Jo Campbell
That is only a small sampling of the many, many worthy collections out there.
I’ve published two story collections and two novels – Portraits of a Few of the People I’ve Made Cry was the first collection and my first book. Following it were two novels, Little Known Facts and Paris, He Said. Portraits won AWP’s 2009 Grace Paley Prize, and I was 39 when it was published. I’d been out of graduate school for 11 years by then and had been writing continuously for about 18 years when I got the call from AWP about it having been selected for that year’s prize. It was May 18, 2009; I won’t forget that day, needless to say.
If you’ve read or would like to read any of my books and want to share them with a book club, I’d be happy to do a Skype session with you and your fellow readers. You can contact me here or through my website, www.christinesneed.com, if you’re interested.
In view of the new administration taking over the White House and all other branches of the U.S. government today, I think millions of people feel debilitating uncertainty about the future. I certainly do. More than ever, I wish our leaders would take to heart this Buddhist precept: Think 9 times before you speak.
2016 was a busy year – a lot of teaching and writing, and my fourth book, The Virginity of Famous Men, was published in September 2016 in the US, November 2016 in the UK (both by Bloomsbury). It’s a short story collection and was sold in a two-book deal with my third book, the novel Paris, He Said, back in what look to me now to be the relatively carefree times of July 2013.
You hear often that story collections are the unwanted children of the publishing world, and there are plenty of readers who aren’t too interested in them either. But they’re a terrific literary form, and probably my favorite of all prose forms, as both writer and reader.
These are a few of the collections I’ve enjoyed intensely over the last several or so years. (A couple of the following might technically be classified as novels or novels-in-stories).
Runaway, Alice Munro
All Aunt Hagar’s Children, Edward P. Jones
A Relative Stranger, Charles Baxter
My Life in Heavy Metal, Steve Almond
Stop That Girl, Elizabeth McKenzie
Faulty Predictions, Karin Lin-Greenberg
The Bigness of the World, Lori Ostlund
The Jungle Around Us, Anne Raeff
Twilight of the Superheroes, Deborah Eisenberg
American Salvage, Bonnie Jo Campbell
That is only a small sampling of the many, many worthy collections out there.
I’ve published two story collections and two novels – Portraits of a Few of the People I’ve Made Cry was the first collection and my first book. Following it were two novels, Little Known Facts and Paris, He Said. Portraits won AWP’s 2009 Grace Paley Prize, and I was 39 when it was published. I’d been out of graduate school for 11 years by then and had been writing continuously for about 18 years when I got the call from AWP about it having been selected for that year’s prize. It was May 18, 2009; I won’t forget that day, needless to say.
If you’ve read or would like to read any of my books and want to share them with a book club, I’d be happy to do a Skype session with you and your fellow readers. You can contact me here or through my website, www.christinesneed.com, if you’re interested.
