by Jamie Chavez | Nov 12, 2015 | Authors & Other Writers, Creativity
Every work of art is one half of a secret handshake, a challenge that seeks the password, a heliograph flashed from a tower window, an act of hopeless optimism in the service of bottomless longing. Every great record or novel or comic book convenes the first meeting...
by Jamie Chavez | Nov 7, 2015 | Authors & Other Writers
We’ve talked some, here, about memoir, creative nonfiction, and personal essays, probably because it’s a type of writing I particularly enjoy (for work and personal reading). I’ve even reviewed some I’ve read: Michael Hainey, Elizabeth Bard, Eddie Huang, Phyllis Rose,...
by Jamie Chavez | Oct 31, 2015 | Authors & Other Writers
About this time every year, articles about Bram Stoker appear, and I’d saved one just for curiosity’s sake (“Bram Stoker: 9 things you didn’t know about the ‘Dracula’ author” from the Christian Science Monitor): • Stoker was a sickly boy up to age seven. • He admired...
by Jamie Chavez | Oct 29, 2015 | Authors & Other Writers
Today I talked with an artist and a poet about luck. The artist (a man) is in his sixties; the poet (a man) is in his twenties. The artist is a cheerful curmudgeon, a man of years; the poet is sweetly irreverent, and still expecting, before he is too much older, his...
by Jamie Chavez | Oct 22, 2015 | Authors & Other Writers
It was a fine celebration. He had told us that ‘dizzy dreams can spring from the dry bones of the dead,’ but we were not in the mood to speculate thus with him last Friday. There was too much going on; the day was crowded, and sometimes even clangorous with public and...
by Jamie Chavez | Sep 21, 2015 | Authors & Other Writers, The Book Biz
Not long ago I was a bit demoralized by the brusque reaction I received from an author whose manuscript I’d praised. It was polished, humorous, well-organized. There was really very little for me to critique, but the few gentle massages I suggested were rejected....
