Category: Fiction

Recommended Reading 1/4/2017

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As the new year is starting, I wanted to share some of the great stories, poems and essays that I’ve been reading lately.  I hope you enjoy these as much as I have.

Darnell Arnoult’s essay, When I Started to Cry, is online at Blackbird: http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v15n2/nonfiction/arnoult-d/started_page.shtml.

Becky Bond, who is always hilarious, writes about the anxiety that comes with filling out forms: http://www.beckybondwrites.com/ffa-form-filling-anxiety.

Agatha French, the new staff writer in books at the Los Angeles Times, recently interviewed Stephanie Danler about her bestseller, Sweetbitter: http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-danler-sweetbitter-20160916-snap-story.html.  She also interviewed Jill Soloway and Eileen Myles about creativity, “queer art,” and the end of their relationship: http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-soloway-myles-20161031-story.html?utm_source=Books&utm_campaign=5465d277fe-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2016_10_26&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ee9d7b9236-5465d277fe-79848189.

Megan Galbraith’s wonderful essay, Learning to Mother Myself, was published in The Manifest Station: http://themanifeststation.net/2016/11/22/learning-to-mother-myself/.

Keith Lesmeister’s forthcoming collection, We Could Have Been Happy Here, is included in Memorious’s list of most anticipated books of 2017: https://memoriousmag.wordpress.com/2016/12/28/barrett-bowlins-anticipated-books-of-2017/.

Linda Michel-Cassidy interviewed Gonzalo Torne for The Rumpus: http://therumpus.net/2016/11/the-rumpus-interview-with-gonzalo-torne/.

Shawna Kay Rodenberg has written an important article about education, coal and poverty in Eastern Kentucky for Salon: http://www.salon.com/2016/12/31/sheltering-in-place-for-students-in-donald-trump-loving-coal-country-school-choice-isnt-a-solution/.

Susan Pagani’s story, The Fledgling, is in the new issue of The Rappahannock Review: http://www.rappahannockreview.com/susan-pagani-the-fledgling-f/.

Cassie Pruyn wrote a brilliant essay for VIDA that you should read and share: http://www.vidaweb.org/report-from-the-field-speaking-into-silences/.

Corina Zappia is a frequent contributor to The Stranger’s Food & Drink section. Recently, she wrote “Mackerel, You Sexy Bastard: In Defense of Sardines, Herring, and other Maligned Fishy Fish,” http://www.thestranger.com/food-and-drink/2016/10/26/24645304/mackerel-you-sexy-bastard and “Washington Is Getting so Cheesy,” http://www.thestranger.com/food-and-drink/2016/09/09/24551761/washington-is-getting-so-cheesy.

 

 

 

 

My 2016 Reading List

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In regards to reading, I had two goals this year.  Actually, I’m going to refer to them as one goal and one hope.

The goal was to read one Shakespeare play each month.  The few I had read before this year were school assignments, which I mostly wasn’t prepared to read and didn’t get much out of.  I got a bit behind during the fall semester, but I managed to catch up just this week in order to complete my goal.

My hope was to read 100 books this year.  Why 100?  I don’t know.  It’s a fairly arbitrary number, but it’s nice and round, and I thought this was the year that I could do it.  Unfortunately, I’m a bit short, clocking in at only 91 books read this year (full list below).  I admit that almost half of those books were poetry books, which means that many were a bit short.  Still, 91 is a respectable number, or so I’m telling myself.

Here’s the full list.  FYI, a few of these books are unpublished manuscripts.  You won’t find them for purchase yet, but I hope you’ll find them one day soon.

  1. Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace
  2. Diane Cook – Man V. Nature
  3. Steven Pressfield – The War of Art
  4. David Daniel – Seven-Star Bird
  5. Charles Dodd White & Larry Smith – Appalachia Now
  6. William Trent Pancoast – Valley Real Estate
  7. William Shakespeare – Othello
  8. William Kelley Woolfitt – Beauty Strip
  9. William Kelley Woolfitt – Charles of the Desert
  10. Richie Hofmann – Second Empire
  11. Jill McCorkle – Creatures of Habit
  12. Junot Diaz – The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  13. Michael Ondaatje – Divisadero
  14. William Shakespeare – The First Part of Henry VI
  15. Jeremy Jones – Bearwallow
  16. Elijah Burrell – The Skin of the River
  17. William Shakespeare – The Second Part of Henry VI
  18. Wesley Browne – Slice
  19. Pauletta Hansel – The Lives We Live in Houses
  20. Alex Taylor – The Name of the Nearest River
  21. Major Jackson – Holding Company
  22. Kyle McCord – You Are Indeed an Elk, But This is Not the Forest You Were Born to Graze
  23. Jodi Lynn Anderson – Tiger Lily
  24. Brent Martin – Hunting for Camellias at Horseshoe Bend
  25. William Shakespeare – The Third Part of Henry VI
  26. Robert Zubrin – The Case for Mars
  27. Rose McLarney – The Always Broken Plates of Mountains
  28. Rose McLarney – Its Day Being Gone
  29. Lee Smith – Cakewalk
  30. Amy Willoughby-Burle – Out Across the Nowhere
  31. Darnell Arnoult – Galaxie Wagon
  32. William Shakespeare – Richard III
  33. Pasture Art – Marlin Barton
  34. Barrett Warner – Why is it so hard to kill You?
  35. New Stories from the South 2008 – ZZ Packer
  36. A Fox Appears – Jennifer Stewart-Miller
  37. Larry Brown – Joe (June)
  38. Bob Shachohis – The Woman Who Lost Her Soul
  39. Geoff Dyer – Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It
  40. Theodore Wheeler – Bad Faith
  41. Joanne Proulx – We All Love the Beautiful Girls
  42. William Shakespeare – The Tempest
  43. Ross Gay – Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude
  44. Jim Elledge – Tapping My Arm for a Vein
  45. William Shakespeare – Two Gentleman of Verona
  46. Keith Stewart – Bernadette Peters Hates Me
  47. Cassie Pruyn – Lena
  48. Nathan Hill – The Nix
  49. Erica Anderson-Senter – Seven Days Now
  50. J.K. Daniels – Wedding Pulls
  51. Sue Weaver Dunlap – Knead
  52. Lauren K. Alleyne – Difficult Fruit
  53. Major Jackson – Hoops
  54. Brandon Courtney – Rooms for Rent in the Burning City
  55. Henry Real Bird – Horse Tacks
  56. Jen Leija – Good Bones
  57. William Shakespeare – A Midsummer Night’s Dream
  58. Lyrae Van Clief-Stafanon – Open Interval
  59. Ron Houchin – Death and the River
  60. David Armand – My Mother’s House
  61. William Shakespeare – The Merry Wives of Windsor
  62. Thomas Rain Crowe – Radiogenesis
  63. Dorianne Laux – The Book of Men
  64. Mark Eisner – The Essential Neruda – Selected Poems
  65. Richard Hague – Possible Debris
  66. Nathalie Handal – Poet in Andalucia
  67. Saeed Jones – Prelude to Bruise
  68. Joseph Bathanti – Anson County
  69. Jim Minick – Burning Heaven
  70. Jim Harrison – Letters to Yesenin
  71. Tim Peeler – Fresh Horses
  72. Mark Wagenaar – Body Distances
  73. Richard Hague – Alive in Hard Country
  74. Connie Jordan Green – Darwin’s Breath
  75. Grace Paley – Later the Same Day
  76. William Shakespeare – Measure for Measure
  77. TJ Jarrett – Zion
  78. Carrie Mullins – Night Garden
  79. William Shakespeare – Comedy of Errors
  80. William Shakespeare – Love’s Labour’s Lost
  81. -91. (11 poetry manuscripts I read for a contest)

I’d love to know what you read this year.  If you don’t want to include your full list, what were your favorite books of 2016?

My Review of Wheeler’s Bad Faith

Denton Loving1 Comment

My review of Theodore Wheeler’s collection of short stories is live today at Ploughshares.

I met Theodore Wheeler back in 2012 at the Key West Literary Seminars.  He’s a fiction writer and legal reporter living in Omaha, Nebraska. His novel, Kings of Broken Things, will be published by Little A in August 2017. But his collection of short fiction, Bad Faith, is available NOW from Queen’s Ferry Press.

In addition to being a great collection of stories, Bad Faith wins all awards for the hands-down best cover image, maybe ever.

bad-faith-final-png

 

 

 

 

How the Mammoth’s Blood Flows

Denton LovingLeave a comment

6022-wooly-mammoth

I’m immensely grateful to Prime Number Magazine for including my story, “How the Mammoth’s Blood Flows,” in their new issue.  I’ve admired the work of Prime Number and Press 53 for a long time now.  Thanks to Press 53 founding editor Kevin Morgan Watson. Thanks also to Gerry Wilson, who was the guest editor who selected my story.

You can read the entire story online here: http://www.primenumbermagazine.com/Issue101_Loving.html 

Recommended Reading 9/23/2016

Denton LovingLeave a comment

I’ve been reading some great stories, poems and essays in the past few weeks.  If you’re looking for something to hold your attention over the weekend, try one (or all) of these:

Barrett Warner’s poem, Oxon Run, was recently featured at Autumn Sky Poetry Daily: https://autumnskypoetrydaily.com/2016/09/08/oxon-run-by-barrett-warner/.

Emily Mohn-Slate has two poems at Connotation Press: http://www.connotationpress.com/poetry/2862-emily-mohn-slate-poetry.

Linda Michel-Cassidy interviewed Tom McAllister and Mike Ingram, the creators of Book Fight!, over at Entropy: http://entropymag.org/book-fight-books-we-love-books-we-hate-books-that-inspire-us-baffle-us-infuriate-us/.

K.L. Browne’s fantastic story, Toucan, was published this week at Ascent: http://www.readthebestwriting.com/toucan-kelly-browne/.

Susan Pagani wrote this cool article about a cooperative grocery store in Minneapolis for Civil Eats, a national food justice mag: http://civileats.com/2016/09/20/this-minneapolis-cooperative-grocery-store-is-working-to-break-the-diversity-mold/.

Finally, I highly recommend you check out this essay by Jamie Zvirzdin in The Kenyon Review’s Poetics of Science issue: http://www.kenyonreview.org/kr-online-issue/2016-fall/selections/jamie-zvirzdin-656342/.  The essay is titled, “Observations of a Science Editor: If Romantic Scientists Pilfered Fiction’s Toolbox, You Can Too,” and it’s really fascinating.

Knud Sørensen’s “Just One Load of Gravel”

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I love this story, “Just One Load of Gravel,” originally written by Danish writer Knud Sørensen and translated into English by Michael Goldman.

“And while he was driving along, lost in his own thoughts, in his just a few-weeks-old Morris Oxford, he didn’t just hear a bump, he felt it too, when it was transmitted down from the seat, up through his spine to his brain, telling him that underneath him, underneath his car, there was something that was not supposed to be there.” (Read the whole story by clicking the link in the above title.)

I’ve had the pleasure of reading some of Sørensen’s poetry, which Michael Goldman also translated, but this is the first short story I’ve read from the pair, published in the Spring 2016 Issue of The Apple Valley Review.  There’s a Chekhovian sensibility at work in this story, where very little happens.  Yet, in such a short piece, a whole world is revealed in beautiful detail.  A quiet but beautiful world, it seems to me.

If you like this story or are just interested in translated literature, check out Hammer and Horn Productions, which Goldman founded.  Goldman says this about translating: “Repeatedly I have had the experience, when reading a piece of exquisite Danish literature, that the page suddenly turns into a mirror, and there I sit staring into myself, noticing parts of my inner life that I had forgotten or had never noticed before.”