Tag: Lori Ostlund

Finding Voice to Give Voice: Q&A with Lori Ostlund

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The title of Lori Ostlund’s new story collection, Are You Happy? (272 pages; Astra House), suggests the quandary of whether Ostlund is interrogating the usefulness of the question itself or exploring whether her characters are genuinely happy. A few stories in—with a cast of characters including a girl who is molested by a coach, a loving couple whose son dies, and a woman who discovers a peeping tom—the issue becomes moot. Gauging the happiness of others and ourselves is a social instinct and a practice, and interrogation is a constant part of that process. Within her stories, Ostlund captures how […]

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Yearning at Its Highest Levels: Q&A with Iheoma Nwachukwu

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The first time I read Iheoma Nwachukwu’s story collection Japa & Other Stories (168 pages; University of Georgia Press), I was staying in a small Airbnb near the Mexico border while my wife volunteered as an interpreter for human rights lawyers interviewing detainees at two nearby detention centers. Each night when she returned, she talked for hours about the people they had interviewed and how odd it was to see these centers filled with people from around the world, who had all somehow made their way through Mexico. So, of course, it seemed like a strange serendipity that of the […]

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Announcing our next Writers’ Workshop: Lori Ostlund on 3rd-Person Close Perspective

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Posted on by Zack Ravas

We’re pleased to announce our next Writers’ Workshop: Lori Ostlund on 3rd-Person Close Perspective. This Zoom-based Writers’ Workshop will take place on April 22nd from 11am to 2pm PST. Purchase your ticket today (and please feel free to spread the word to any of your writer friends!). “I’ve found that often people think that 3rd-close is just a variation on 1st-person, or that widening the distance from the character means that the narrator becomes invisible or neutral, even bland,” says instructor Lori Ostlund, “but I think of 3rd-person close as a way to have the best of both worlds: to […]

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Strength of Kindness & Reason: Q&A with ‘Winter Kept Us Warm’ Author Anne Raeff

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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 […]

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The Demands of Story: Q&A with ‘Outside Is the Ocean’ Author Matthew Lansburgh

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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 […]

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ZYZZYVA Interview Series: Lori Ostlund

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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 […]

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Making (and Making Sense of) a New Life: ‘After the Parade’ by Lori Ostlund

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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 […]

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Clear as Cake

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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.

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