MY SUMMER OF DEBUTS

Last year, I was invited to be a judge for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize which, as you all know by now, was awarded in November to John Pipkin's Woodsburner, a choice I wholly and enthusiastically approved of. (I was also tremendously impressed with Paul Harding's Tinkers – I've had a note on my desk since then to add the book to the Recommended sidebar.) I'm not going to talk about the judges (who were all smart and cool and engaged) or the deliberations (which were cordial and ...