Interviews With NBA Nominees

Ron chats with National Book Award nominees Joan Silber and Lily Tuck.

[Lily Tuck] pointed out the industry’s confused (or even “double-faced”) posturing over the awards. “Last year, when the National Book Foundation nominated Stephen King for a lifetime achievement award,” she recalled, “there was a huge hue and cry about how he was a popular writer, not a literary writer. Now they’re screaming and yelling that we’re too literary and not popular enough.”

A couple of days ago, Ron sat down with a third nominee, Christine Schutt. So of course now we have expectations that we’ll soon be reading interviews with Kate Walbert and Sarah Shun-lien Bynum (whose story “Accomplice” in the current BASS I quite enjoyed.)