Frequent Moorishgirl contributor and Los Angeles-based writer Dan Olivas informs us that he will be reading and signing copies of his first children’s book, Benjamin and the Word. Details:
Venue: Tia Chucha’s Cafe Cultural
Address: 12737 Glenoaks Blvd., Sylmar
Ages: Up to fourth grade
Admission: Free
For more information call: (818) 362-7060
Or visit: http://www.tiachucha.com
Check it out.
Lisa Glatt, whose story collection The Apple’s Bruise was reviewed here at Moorishgirl in June, is interviewed over at Bookslut. Here’s a snippet:
So no procrastination. You write when you sit and that’s that.
LG: Yeah! It’s kind of that thing, I don’t know if you’ve heard it but there is no such thing as writer’s block, you just have to lower your expectations. It’s so true! If you are sitting there waiting for genius to visit you or the muse or whatever you’ll never get anything done. I find that especially with fiction and longer fiction. When I was writing poetry and was waiting for the feeling and the feeling came and I don’t think it works like that for fiction. There isn’t that rush. You have to sit there and do some work and hopefully something will happen.
Glatt’s husband, poet David Hernandez, chimes in as well.
The August 2005 issue of Harper’s has a new short story by Naguib Mahfouz, titled “The Disturbing Occurrences.” Unfortunately, it’s not available online.
Ghanaian writer Mohammed Naseehu Ali, whose short fiction appeared in the New Yorker earlier this year, has a collection of stories out now, titled The Prophet of Zongo Street. It’s about a group of residents on a fictitious street in Accra who grapple with issues of family and faith. The L.A. Times‘ Merle Rubin reviews (and likes) it: Humor — and a dose of skepticism — about isms.
Over the last few days, I’ve seen several articles about books of fiction that seem newly relevant in the aftermath of the London attacks. Over at the Times, for instance, Helen Rumbelow revisits Hanif Kureishi’s short story “My Son the Fanatic,” which is about an older Pakistani man who watches helplessly as his son Ali is taken in by fundamentalists. The story appeared in Love In A Blue Time, and was also adapted by Kureishi for the screen. She also suggests Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, in which young Millat’s transformation from hipster to Satanic-Verses-burning-goon is dramatized with conviction and humor. Lastly, Rumbelow mentions Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, for its depiction of a young Islamist revolutionary (with whom Nazneen has an affair).
Over at the Mobile Register, John Sledge devotes a column to Brick Lane, and finds that Ali provides “a fully rounded portrait of one family and its confrontation with inexorable social and historical forces.”
Meanwhile, over at Salon, Laura Miller reviews three books of non-fiction: Robert Pape’s Dying to Win, Terry McDermott’s Perfect Soldiers and Karen Armstrong’s The Battle for God, and gets incrementally more positive about each book in turn.
This is what seven books of fiction and a Booker Prize shortlist buys you: a 200-word review in the New York Times. And you share the same page with five other brown writers.