Art Taylor's Blog, page 79

March 13, 2017

Spring Break! With Snow! And Birthday Week Too!

This week is Spring Break at George Mason University—and each of those words comes with an ironic twist.


The official start of Spring is, as I write this, still several days away, and in the meantime, we’re under a winter weather warning, with forecasts including anywhere from 1 to 12 inches of snow, depending on which source you’re checking. (Whatever the totals, our son Dash is already ready for hot chocolate!)


As for the “Break” part…ever since last Tuesday, I’ve been pacing myself through all the grading I need to do: four essays a day from my Recent American Fiction class, four a day from my Creative Nonfiction workshop, and three reviews from my Reviewing course—plus a couple of books to read in preparation for next week!


One highlight of the week, however: Thursday is my birthday! (I won’t say which one.) Among my birthday plans are to eat at every restaurant that has emailed me some sort of birthday perk: free appetizers, entrees, and desserts! It’s a good way to feel both indulgent and spoiled at the same time.

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Published on March 13, 2017 07:08

March 5, 2017

Bay to Ocean Writers Conference, Saturday, March 11

This Saturday, March 11, both my wife, Tara Laskowski, and I will be presenting sessions on short fiction at the Bay to Ocean Writers Conference, an all-day event taking place in the Kent Humanities Building at Chesapeake College in Wye Mills, Maryland. Several other author friends are taking part as well, including Barbara Esstman, Austin Camacho, Kathryn Johnson, and Gregg Wilhelm, and the full list of presentations can be found here, along with a PDF of the day’s schedule.


The conference’s mission is “to inform, encourage, and inspire writers of all levels, from beginners to published authors” and “to share helpful knowledge and experiences among writers about every facet of writing.”


My own presentation, at 10:15 a.m., is “The Short Story: Big Worlds in Small Spaces,” and here’s the description: “How can you create fully fleshed characters and satisfying plots within the strict confines of the short story? Join award-winning short story writer Art Taylor for a discussion of this sometimes challenging form. After writing your own six-sentence story, you’ll examine the architecture of the short story (linear vs. modular), explore scenes as the building blocks of short fiction, and draw on sources as diverse at Cinderella, Doc Savage, and South Park for guidance and inspiration.”


Tara’s presentation, at 1:45 p.m., is “Tiny but Mighty: How to Write Amazing Flash Fiction.” Here’s the description of her talk: “Imagine it: An evocative, complete short story in 1000 words or less. This session will focus on flash fiction, the form taking online publishing by storm. Tara Laskowski, longtime editor of the flash fiction journal SmokeLong Quarterly, will define this type of writing and its many forms—from microfiction to novellas-in-flash—and walk you through some dos and don’ts for crafting your own tiny stories.”


Looking forward to much fun on the Eastern Shore!

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Published on March 05, 2017 19:39

March 3, 2017

SleuthSayers: On the Ethics of Reviewing

In my column at SleuthSayers this week, I give a glimpse into the course on reviewing I’m currently teaching at George Mason University—and specifically our recent class meeting on the ethics of reviewing, which offered readings and discussion with some perhaps surprisingly different perspectives on this topic. Here’s a sample from my post at SleuthSayers:


The column on John Updike’s rules champions the “role social responsibility of the critic” by building on E.B. White’s call for writers to “life people up, not lower them down.” A couple of the columns stressed the need for fairness in reviewing—not only in terms of being fair to the book being reviewed by specifically by avoiding conflicts of interest in several directions: reviewers shouldn’t be friends with the authors they’re reviewing, nor should they be enemies, perhaps for obvious reasons.


And yet in contrast, there are concerns that too much politeness might lead, in Julavits’ words, to “dreckish handholding” and a “trumpeting of mediocrity,” and Shafer said more frankly, “The point of a book review isn’t to review worthy books fairly, it’s to publish good pieces“—and he pointed to the “British model” of assigning “lively-but-conflicted writers” to create greater tension (and perhaps draw more readers).


Read the whole post here.

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Published on March 03, 2017 06:42

February 23, 2017

The Thrill Begins: “The Short and Long of It”

Thanks to Wendy Tyson for including me in a panel discussion on short stories at The Thrill Begins. The topic at hand centers around the question of whether writers should work on short stories while trying to get their novels published (or maybe while trying to write those novels in the first place or maybe between novels). I was pleased to share my own thoughts, and it was great fun hearing the perspectives of the other panelists: Gretchen Archer, E.A. Aymar, and B.K. Stevens—especially since Bonnie Stevens and I used some of the same phrases in cautioning about preconceptions on the relationships between the two forms!


Read the full discussion here.

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Published on February 23, 2017 09:01

February 17, 2017

SleuthSayers: Guest Post by Harley Mazuk

At SleuthSayers this week, I turned over my regular slot to my good friend and fellow short story writer Harley Mazuk, whose debut novel White with Fish, Red with Murder is coming out in late February. Harley and I share similar interests in the world of crime fiction, and it’s been a pleasure to follow his career from his first story in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine a few years back through the development of his main character, PI Frank Swiver, and now to the new novel.


Check out Harley here on the origins of his character and on the reading that informed and inspired his own work.

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Published on February 17, 2017 06:48

February 14, 2017

My Newsletter Needs Updating!

…and not just because of the picture of a Christmas ornament and tree (and here it is Valentine’s Day week).


I’ll be putting out my new newsletter soon, with updates on a new publication and an award nomination. In the meantime, just a quick encouragement to readers here to (a) sign up for the newsletter and (b) enter a contest for free stuff!


You have to be a subscriber to win, and you have to check out the question at the end of the previous newsletter to enter. You can find that newsletter here.


Best wishes to all who enter—and stay tuned for more news ahead!

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Published on February 14, 2017 06:47

February 13, 2017

Tea Time at Mystery Playground

As part of its new Tea Time series, Mystery Playground invited me to talk about my story “Parallel Play,” recently named a finalist for the Agatha Award and—just coincidentally—actually featuring a scene with tea! (….though reading it out of context of the full story makes for a different experience, I learned.)


Check out the full post here—along with why I chose Lapsang Souchong to pair with the story.

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Published on February 13, 2017 06:56

February 6, 2017

AWP in DC

This week is the annual AWP Conference—the organization’s 50th year and right in our backdoor this year! George Mason University is one of the sponsors of the conference, and we’ll have a big presence on panels, at off-site events, and in the bookfair itself.


Here’s my own personal schedule of appearances:



Panel: “The G Word: Writing and Teaching Genre in a Changing Literary Landscape,” with Matt Bell, Katie Cortese, Idra Novey, and Porochista Khakpour, Marquis Salon 6, Meeting Level Two, Marriott Marquis, 901 Massachusetts Avenue NW  • Thursday, February 9, 10:30 a.m.
Author Signing, George Mason University Booth, Bookfair Booth 501, Walter E. Washington Convention Center, 801 Mt. Vernon Place NW • Thursday, February 9, 1 p.m.
Reading hosted by SmokeLong Quarterly and DC’s Noir at the Bar, with authors E.A. Aymar, Matt Bell. Tara Campbell, Rob Hart, W. Todd Kaneko, Tara Laskowski, Jennifer Pashley, and Amber Sparks, The Pub and the People, 1648 N. Capitol Street NW • Saturday, February 11, 7 p.m.

For more information on programs featuring various Mason faculty, alums, students, organizations and partners, visit the Mason English Department’s website here.


And you can always find a list of all my upcoming events here.

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Published on February 06, 2017 05:00

February 3, 2017

SleuthSayers: Agatha Best First Novel Finalists

It’s a great pleasure for me to host this year’s finalists for the Agatha Award for Best First Novel as they embark on their group blog tour. For their debut at SleuthSayers, I posed this question:


“First impressions can tell us a lot about a person—and first novels may offer us immediate insights into the authors behind them: their interests, their passions, the things they value about the wider world. What drove you to write this book? And what glimpses do we get of you in the characters, the plot, the setting, or the themes?”


And you can find answers here from the finalists themselves:  Marla Cooper, author of Terror in Taffeta; Alexia Gordon, author of Murder in G Major; Cynthia Kuhn, author of The Semester of Our Discontent; 
Nadine Nettmann, author of Decanting a Murder, and Renee Patrick, author of Design for Dying.

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Published on February 03, 2017 05:52

January 30, 2017

Washington Independent Review of Books: On Christie’s Death on the Nile

A recent production of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Nile—adapted from her own novel Death on the Nile—and an invitation to host a post-show chat for George Mason University’s Faculty Arts Club prompted me to look back at the various incarnations of the tale, including an earlier short story featuring Christie’s lesser-known detective Parker Pyne. Today at the Washington Independent Review of Books, I browse through some of my reading—and recommend a couple of titles for folks interested in learning more themselves, including the Christie short story collection Masterpieces in Miniature and John Curran’s thrilling study Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks (as well as its companion Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making).


Additionally, I spotlight this year’s Agatha Award finalists for Best Short Story—and pleased to be among that group, along with Gretchen Archer, Barb Goffman, Edith Maxwell, and B.K. Stevens.


Read the full column here.

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Published on January 30, 2017 06:08