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Browsing the web is an odd thing. You come across references to your work, your artistic output every now and then. So far I’ve found a couple of mentions of my essay: “Stalking Woody Allen: Your Guide in 54 Parts,” published in Australia’s premier journal, Etchings. Both short mentions were positive (phew!). They can be…

I recently attended the Colgate Writers’ Conference in Hamilton, NY. While there I met some great people and outstanding writers. In particular J. Robert Lennon (MFA director at Cornell and author of several funny novels), Brian Hall (novelist — check out his recent one on Robert Frost), and Peter Balakian (poetry, memoir, and so forth).…

So far this summer I’ve been taking it easy with little time spent reading. I did, however, reread The Great Gatsby. My main reason for this was to see how Fitzgerald uses the peripheral narrator for my own novel. Then I read Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, a post-9/11 novel set in New York and London. 9/11 doesn’t…

Today I heard that my translation of an untitled Anglo-Saxon poem (but one often referred to as “Wulf and Eadwacer”) together with an introductory essay will be published in Boston University’s Pusteblume: A Journal of and about Translation.  The issue is due out in spring 2011.

I dabble in poetry on the odd occasion, trying to create form and meaning in a new way. My usual output in this genre is around 3-4 poems a year. Pretty meager by anyone’s standards. I do wish to talk about the lyric essay (nonfiction/poetry hybrid) in an upcoming post, but for now a call-out…

I referred in my previous post to online literary journals. Now, I’m not entirely savvy yet with all of them and how they are perceived and ranked. Therefore, the following is just a brief list of some. Please feel free to add others in the comments section. Blackbird AGNI online Pindeldyboz The New River Narrative…

In my deluded state-of-mind, the career plan I would like to follow is this: fill a bookshelf of my own work (literary journals, magazines, etc.) before submitting to online publications. Now, both print and online places have their own strengths and weaknesses: Print — durable and prestigious medium, yet low circulation figures (often around 1,000…

I thought it would be vaguely interesting to sift through the books I’ve read over the last months. Apart from the following, I’ve also read countless short stories and essays for class, in journals, journal submissions, and comp papers. Lolita. Vladamir Nabokov. Time Will Darken It. William Maxwell. So Long, See You Tomorrow. William Maxwell.…

Last week I read Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel To the Lighthouse. The remarkable thing about this book was the prose style: stream-of-consciousness and third person omniscient. Often passages of text were beautifully written and lucid; yet as the point of view switched from character to character I often found myself wondering whose mind I was in, and I…