Vick Mickunas

It has been five long years since Junot Diaz published his fabulous novel "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao." If you have read that book then you know that near the end of it we learned that Oscar's story was actually being told by his friend Yunior.

Now Yunior is back as the lead character in a collection of stories called "This is How You Lose Her." Yunior is a writer and an incorrigible player.  Yunior certainly does love the ladies. And he has no sense of shame.

In this interview Junot Diaz provides some rare glimpses into his creative process.

 

How do you feel about your privacy? Do you take it for granted? Garret Keizer has spent some time pondering privacy issues. He shares some his ruminations in this new pocket-sized paperback.

Our privacy is being eroded. There are many reasons and excuses for why this is happening; the internet is one privacy invader. The events of 9/11 and the subsequent War on Terror provided the justification for privacy invasions on a global scale. That cell phone you carry can track your movements. That computer chip in your car can be used for surveillance. It never ends.

Claire Vaye Watkins just published her first book. "Battleborn" is a story collection that sizzles like the weather in the Death Valley region where Claire grew up.

She earned her MFA at OSU and began writing these stories while she was living in Ohio. Most of them are set in the West in places like Reno and Las Vegas. These stories are absolute page turners. They will haunt you and leave you wanting more.

In this interview I asked "is this fiction? What is this?"

Verlyn Klinkenborg is one of my favorite writers. He just published a wonderful book about writing.

In "Several Short Sentences about Writing" Klinkenborg gets down to the basics; our sentences. How do we write them?

When we were children we knew how to tell stories. Then we went to school. That is where we supposedly learned how to write. Klinkenborg suggests that the ways we were taught to write are wrong.

So forget all your notions about writing. Listen to this interview. Then you'll probably want to read the book.

 

Norah Vincent's first novel is dark, dark, dark. Nick Walsh is in his mid-30's and he's depressed. He's writing down his thoughts. There are so many things that are troubling him. He carries around all this anger. So he drinks a lot. And he tries to kill the psychic pain that enfolds him.

But it is never that easy to bury your feelings. As Nick comes to grips with the reality of his past and of his current situation we begin to feel a slight bit of compassion and sympathy for him.