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January 14, 2020Bay Area Issue Celebration
Time: 6:00 pm
– 7:00 pm
Location: City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave., San Francisco.
Description: Featuring Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Kevin Simmonds, Rita Bullwinkel, Chia-Chia Lin, Meg Hurtado Bloom, and Paul Wilner. Free.
January 24, 2020Bay Area Issue Celebration, East Bay
Time: 6:00 pm
– 7:00 pm
Location: East Bay Booksellers, 5433 College Ave., Oakland
Description: Featuring Matthew Zapruder, Lydia Conklin, Nina Schulyer, sam sax, Andrew Roe, and Sara Mumolo. Free.
February 6, 2020Bay Area Issue Celebration
Time: 6:00 pm
– 7:00 pm
Location: Mechanics' Institute, 57 Post Street, San Francisco
Description: Featuring Luiza Flynn-Goodlett, Michael Sears, Gloria Frym, and W.S. Di Piero. Free.
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Tag Archives: Lori Ostlund
Strength of Kindness & Reason: Q&A with ‘Winter Kept Us Warm’ Author Anne Raeff
San Francisco writer Anne Raeff’s new novel, Winter Kept Us Warm’’ (304 pages; Counterpoint Press), officially out next Tuesday, is an ambitious, multi-generational tale that deals with the interlocking lives of three characters—Ulli, Leo, and Isaac—who meet in Berlin shortly after World War II has ended. A departure of sorts from Raeff’s 2015 story collection, The Jungle Around Us, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, it shares a similar interest in the complexities of character, motive, and human nature, albeit on a different palette. (In a coincidence of fate, Raeff’s wife, Lori Ostlund, previously won the O’Connor …Continue reading
Posted in Interviews
Tagged anne raeff, fiction, Flannery O'Connor, Lori Ostlund, malcolm lowry, Marc Raeff, novel, Russia, The Jungle Around Us, Winter Kept Us Warm, Word War Two
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The Demands of Story: Q&A with ‘Outside Is the Ocean’ Author Matthew Lansburgh
In 2011, I was living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where I spent two years as the Kenan Visiting Writer shortly after the release of my first book, a story collection. One of these stories, “Bed Death,” appeared in the PEN/O.Henry Prize Stories, and it was this publication that led to my meeting Matthew Lansburgh. He sent me an email after reading it, and we struck up a friendship. In 2012, I moved back to San Francisco, and during a quick trip to New York in 2015, I finally met Matthew; we spent two days together, during which time he …Continue reading
Posted in Interviews
Tagged anne raeff, fiction, Germany, Iowa Short Fiction Award, LGBTQ, literature, Lori Ostlund, Matthew Lansburgh, Outside Is the Ocean
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ZYZZYVA Interview Series: Lori Ostlund
Lori Ostlund (whose story “Clear as Cake” was published in ZYZZYVA No. 97) is the author of two books—the story collection “The Bigness of the World” (winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award, the Edmund White Award, and a California Book Award), and most recently, “After the Parade,” her first novel. Shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, “After the Parade” tells the mostly funny but also unhappy story of Aaron, a man who feels compelled to leave his older partner and stable life in New Mexico for a new start in San Francisco. As he teaches English to …Continue reading
Posted in Video Interviews
Tagged After the Parade, Lori Ostlund, Managing Editor, novel, Oscar Villalon, The Booksmith
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Making (and Making Sense of) a New Life: ‘After the Parade’ by Lori Ostlund
If it’s true that a good man is hard to find, Lori Ostlund’s first novel, After the Parade (Scribner; 352 pages), demonstrates that leaving one might be just as difficult. As the book opens, Aaron Englund has finally worked up the nerve to break up with Walter, his older lover/Henry Higgins of 23 years, with whom he long ago fell out of love. Having packed his possessions, Aaron steers his U-Haul away from the security of their home in Albuquerque toward San Francisco. Not because he wants to join the city’s famous gay scene, but because Taffy, a colleague, lives …Continue reading
Posted in News
Tagged After the Parade, Lori Ostlund, novel, San Francisco, The Bigness of the World.
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Clear as Cake
Lori Ostlund is the San Francisco author of the story collection The Bigness of the World (University of Georgia Press), which was awarded the California Book Award for First Fiction, the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award, and the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction.
As she points out in her bio, Ostlund “took a rather circuitous route to becoming a writer. I did not do an MFA program, though my intention was always to be a writer.” Her story, though, in ZYZZYVA’s Spring/Summer issue is set in an evening writing class at a Minnesota college. At a recent reading of “Clear as Cake” at Vesuvio, Ostlund had the crowd shaking with laughter. The story, we think you’ll find, is not only hilarious, but wise, too. The following is an excerpt.
