Two weeks from today you can hear a great presentation by Solace in So Many Words contributor Joan Corwin. As I mentioned in an earlier post, this year marks the 100-year anniversary of World War I. Safe Shall Be My Going is Joan’s prize-winning novella about that war and she will be reading from it at Evanston Public Library, Sunday, December 14, at 3 pm. Joan wrote to me about the upcoming event in an email: "As many of you know, July 28, 2014 marked the centennial of … [Read more...]
The ides of April
Happy Poetry Month! Harumph, harrumph. It’s the smack dab middle of the month, also our tax deadline day, and in Chicago, the landscape is once again clearing from a surprise snow shower (see Glimpse of Solace). I wanted to share some stuff with you. First, as I have before in this space, I recommend you drop in on Dave Bonta’s poetry blog, Via Negativa. A recent post is "National Poetry Day is a failure." It will get you thinking. Dave links to the post "Against … [Read more...]
Rochelle Distelheim “The Kiss-Me-Quick”
The Kiss-Me-Quick I visited my friend and we talked about shoes instead of about dying. I wanted to talk about dying, but she’s the one who’s dying and she wanted to talk about shoes. We looked at the three shoe boxes lined up on the carpet next to the couch where she was. The boxes were open and I saw the tips of three new pairs of shoes. There was that faintly sour smell new shoes have that reminds me of going with my mother into a shoe store, with her holding … [Read more...]
Two discoveries
This morning I opened my email to find a great deal. May is Short Story Month so Press 53 is having a special on its short story collections. For 99 cents on Kindle, a number of titles are available. And if you order a printed book, Press 53 will send it for free. For more information, visit Press 53 on the web or go to the Kindle store. The other discovery is that a Facebook friend posted a link to an essay by Emily Rapp. The title is "On Survivor's Guilt" and it may … [Read more...]
Spring books: Chacon, Powers, Sklar
Three contributors to Solace in So Many Words have new books! Congrats! Daniel Chacon’s newest publication is Hotel Juarez, which was published in March by Arte Publico Pr. Here’s what Publishers Weekly said in its starred review: “Chacon, winner of the 2007 Hudson Prize for Unending Rooms, returns with a collection of short fiction concerned with American and Mexican relations in which a world of race and identity politics emerges. Linked but never repetitive, these … [Read more...]