Storytellersunplugged

-- Bev Vincent I received a surprising e-mail a few weeks ago from a grade eleven student at a magnet school in Nashville. As part of an English class on critical thinking, their teacher had assigned them my short story “One of Those Weeks” from the anthology From the Borderlands (originally Borderlands 5). This isn’t the first time one of my stories has been read in an English class, but it’s the first time where I have absolutely no association with the teacher, the ... Read More

YOU'VE GOT TO READ THIS!   The title of my entry today has been shamelessly stolen from a book called (what else?) YOU'VE GOT TO READ THIS. Edited by Ron Hansen and Jim Shepard, it's published by Harper Perennial, and is subtitled CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN WRITERS INTRODUCE STORIES THAT HELD THEM IN AWE.  You probably already have a pretty good idea of what the work offers, but Donna Seaman's BOOKLIST review will give you the details:  Writers are passionate readers because literature is an ongoing dialogue. And ... Read More

By Richard Steinberg This month's essay is dedicated with love and gratitude to Sgt. Bryan J. Tutten, 33, of St. Augustine, Fla., who died Dec. 25 in Balad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his position.  He was assigned to the 1st Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, and also, to: Pfc. Brian L. Gorham, 21, of Woodburn, Ky., who died Dec. 31  of wounds suffered in Afghanistan when his vehicle encountered an improvised ... Read More

My first word was “Boo!” and I’ve loved surprises ever since.  I want to discover things.  Refine that, I want to discover hidden things, things that have meaning.  I want there to be more than five senses can take in.  Five senses are standard issue.  Most critters with fin, skin, fur or feathers have them, often with a superior specialty.  Jack rabbits out-hear me.  Eagles out-see me.  I’m tied with the koala bear.  But word has it that heart, mind and soul ... Read More

By Richard Steinberg “It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself,” Ralph Waldo Emerson Our Bear In Mind is deep within the world right now, creating light and words.  And as the world is deeply in need of both light and words, it’s a pleasure to fill in for her today.  I’ll see you again on the 22nd. Abraham Pascal was a writer. True, he was never published.  He lived his ... Read More

Have you ever noticed that the outcomes to life’s most successful quests can’t really be foreseen in detail?  If it’s an initiative that your heart is truly into, then whatever concept you have of success ahead of time, the outcome ends up exceeding it.  “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”  But starting out all you can see are the complexities and the problems up front.  The solutions build stroke by stroke like a painting taking on shape and color.  In the ... Read More

by Brian Hodge [Podcast edition available through iTunes, or here.] It’s been an introspective year, 2007 has. Back in January — a month that doesn’t seem as though it should be coming around again so quickly — I felt compelled to spend some time really thinking about what I do, in the writerly sense, and how I’ve gone about it. The instincts and strategies that have helped move me forward to where I want to go; the blunders and bad habits that have done ... Read More

By Richard Steinberg This month’s column is dedicated to the sacrifices of Capt. Benjamin D. Tiffner, 31, of West Virginia; 5th Special Forces Group and Staff Sgt. Patrick F. Kutschbach, 25, of Pennsylvania; 10th Special Forces Group. Thank you guys, stand easy. “I've been struggling with this toast for several weeks. Should I strike a melancholy, time passes sort of tone? A humorous, light hearted thing? Maybe stentorian wisdom seasoned with a soupcon of slightly controlled emotion? But instead of such frippery, I decided on ... Read More

[Podcast edition available here, although a little later than usual this month.] “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.” — William Munny, Unforgiven It’s always flattering when someone gets outraged on your behalf. Give me 10,000 more who feel the same way, you think, and I’ll have my own army. Or maybe that’s just a personal quirk. I was recently interacting with an army of one, a reader who was genuinely distressed at the gross unfairness of it all: that most of my backlist is out of ... Read More

By Richard Steinberg “Coleridge wasa drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman's name out of a satire then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized anyhow. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Do you still want to be a writer - and if so, why?” Bennett Cerf It’s a question I ask myself frequently.  It’s not to be “happy,” whatever that means.  Referring ... Read More