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ZYZZYVA Events
March 24, 2019Ferlinghetti at 100/Open House Birthday Party
Location: 1:45 p.m., City Lights Booksellers, 261 Columbus Ave., San Francisco
Description: ZYZZYVA joins in celebrating Lawrence Ferlinghetti's 100th Birthday at City Lights, and Vesuvio's. Managing Editor Oscar Villalon emcees a reading in City Light's basement featuring Barbara Jane Reyes, Wendy Trevino, D.A. Powell, sam sax, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Garret Caples, and Joseph Lease. Free. For more info: https://bit.ly/2TIWqPw
Ferlinghetti at 100/Open House Birthday Party
Location: 3 p.m., Vesuvio, 255 Columbus Ave., San Francisco
Description: ZYZZYVA joins in celebrating Lawrence Ferlinghetti's 100th Birthday at City Lights and Vesuvio. Managing Editor Oscar Villalon emcees a reading featuring D.A. Powell, sam sax, Barbara Jane Reyes, Wendy Trevino, Clark Coolidge, Jack Hirschman, and Aggie Falk. Free. For more info: https://bit.ly/2TIWqPw
March 28, 2019ZYZZYVA at AWP
Location: 10:30 a.m., Portland Ballroom 253-254, Oregon Convention Center, Level 2
Description: "Behind the Curtain: The Editors Speak!" with Alison Wright, executive editor of VQR; Emily Nemens, editor of The Paris Review; Karissa Chen, editor-in-chief at Hyphen, and Managing Editor Oscar Villalon. Moderated by Christian Kiefer. More info here: https://bit.ly/2HWVUIk
March 30, 2019ZYZZYVA at AWP
Location: 1:30 p.m., E143-144, Oregon Convention Center, Level 1
Description: "The Future of Criticism: A Conversation with Established and Emerging Critics" with Kate Tuttle, Ismail Muhammad, Jane Ciabattari, Hope Wabuke, and Managing Editor Oscar Villalon. More info here: https://bit.ly/2DYEyXz
April 14, 2019ZYZZYVA at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books
Location: 4 p.m., Hoffman Hall, University of Southern California, Los Angeles
Description: "Writing & Publishing: Inside Stories of the Book Business," featuring panelists Nicole Dewey, Colleen Dunn Bates, and Betsy Amster. Moderated by Managing Editor Oscar Villalon. For more information: https://bit.ly/2HoPxMA
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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
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
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
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
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.
