Bill Cheng's Blog, page 40
March 17, 2014
I’m extremely delighted to be in Guernica’s American...
I’m extremely delighted to be in Guernica’s American South issue (alongside exciting writers like Kiese Laymon, Win Bassett, Kent Wascom, Lauren Holmes, and like, everybody!)
And there are times this love, like all love, makes me feel stupid and ridiculous—giving a piece of my heart to a man born a lifetime ago a thousand miles away. I know what I look like. I know the sound of my voice. I know that a four-story walk-up is not a shotgun shack and the BQE is not the crossroads and that the Key to the Highway was never really mine.
March 14, 2014
The Workshop
The Workshop is now on itunes!
fantagraphics:
eightball-tumbl-o-rama:
Klaudia Herrera Garcia...
Klaudia Herrera Garcia posted her new tattoos on the danielclowes.com facebook page of Mister Jones and the orificeless dog’s hidden map from Daniel Clowes’s “Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron”
Clowes deep cuts, so to speak
March 13, 2014
and speaking of must-read interviews, here’s the ineffable...
and speaking of must-read interviews, here’s the ineffable Lauren Holmes discussing her story in Granta’s New Voices series:
Maybe no one can escape the confines of his or her family. I don’t think physical distance helps with that. Even if you move to the other side of the world, and even if you don’t speak for years or decades, your family is always going to be a part of you. So for Lala, in her fictional universe, this is probably something she’ll struggle with for the rest of her life – how to have or not have a relationship with her mother. And as for the mother, maybe she’s better at living without Lala than Lala is at living without her, but ultimately she can’t escape either – she can’t escape her daughter and she can’t escape her parents.
And if you missed her story How Am I Supposed to Talk to You, just click on through.
I spoke with charming young man Phil Klay for B&N...
I spoke with charming young man Phil Klay for B&N Review!
So writing this book, which required a ton of research and interviews and arguments with other vets, was a constant exercise in humility. I didn’t know nearly as much as I thought I did. And a lot of the things I thought I knew, even things of emotional importance about my own experience, seemed less and less true the more I thought about them. People lie to themselves all the time about what they’ve been through and what it means — I’m no exception. But you write those lies down — lies that really matter to you and that are really painful to let go of because they’ve become a part of who you are — and they don’t work. And then you have smart friends read those lies and call you on them, and that hurts. Writing this book was a process of shredding everything I thought I knew, then rummaging through the wreckage and seeing what was left.
March 11, 2014
The ferociously witty and talented Lauren Holmes’ new...
The ferociously witty and talented Lauren Holmes’ new story on Granta:
I went into the bathroom and took off my shorts and T-shirt. My mom came in behind me and snapped my underwear band and said, ‘You should get yourself some new underwear.’
I imagined myself wearing the pair I bought that said ‘Boys Boys Boys’ a thousand times in black letters. My mom said to get as many pairs with English words on them as possible. Another pair said ‘See you tonight,’ and I thought those were really funny, because if someone else was seeing them, wasn’t it already tonight? Unless it was a reminder to yourself, like, see you tonight when I take my pants off again.
March 10, 2014
The second episode of The Workshop (which I run with Kaitlyn...
The second episode of The Workshop (which I run with Kaitlyn Greenidge and Scott Cheshire) is up in the world. This week’s guest: the incisive and charming Kiese Laymon!
Kiese Laymon visits with us to talk about race, body, gender, politics, the sentence and time travel on this week’s episode of The Workshop!
March 9, 2014
malformalady:
The skull-shaped Snapdragon Flower...
The skull-shaped Snapdragon Flower Dragon(Antirrhinum majus) seed pod. The Antirrhinum, commonly known as the snapdragon has been a popular garden plant for many years. Also known as the dragon flower, its common name derives from the resemblance of the flower to a dragon’s head.Yet once the flower has died, leaving behind the seed pod, something a little more macabre appears. The dragon – just a visual metaphor after all – appears to have a skull.
