This week at WriterHouse: Josh Weil and Essentials of Mystery Writing

Josh Weil Event TONIGHT Just a reminder that this Thursday at 7pm, WriterHouse welcomes critically acclaimed young writer Josh Weil, whose book of three novellas, The New Valley, is set in southwest Virginia. He’ll be discussing “The Renegade Form: The Case for the Novella in Contemporary Fiction.” Book signing to follow. Free and open to [...]

Still time to sign up for The Online Writer this Saturday

SPACE STILL AVAILABLE IN “THE ONLINE WRITER” SEMINAR THIS SATURDAY But don’t wait—register now if you want to learn about blogging, social networks, websites and how to be a freelance writer on the web. This is a soup-to-nuts picture of what it means to be a writer in the digital world, led by copywriter and [...]

Jen Sorensen interview in Sunday Washington Post

Finally the Washington Post does something right: today’s Style section devotes a full page to Jen Sorensen and Slowpoke! Jen was WriterHouse’s first guest when her book One Nation, Oh My God came out, and everyone in Charlottesville knows her insightful and incisive comics from C-Ville Weekly. Check out the comic and the interview. Well [...]

The Online Writer

One Reason Magazines Are Suffering: Their Covers – The Daily Beast

Exhibit A: They don’t make ‘em like they used to. via One Reason Magazines Are Suffering: Their Covers – The Daily Beast

But what about the ladies?

Amy Mercer at The Writer Mama calls attention today to an article from Bitch Magazine that calls for women to own their ambition for their writing careers, to stop apologizing for their writing or for being writers, and to stop accepting dismissive excuses for being overlooked. The author of the article, Anna Clark, cites an [...]

WriterHouse on WVTF

Whoo! We were on the radio! WriterHouse offers solace for Virginia writers – 10.14.08 Virginia has been home to many famous authors from Edgar Alan Poe, Willa Cather, and Booker T. Washington, to John Dos Passos, William Styron, Tom Wolfe, and John Grisham. Now some Charlottesville women have opened a place where the next generation [...]

Thomas Disch’s final interview

If you ever doubt the value of litblogs, consider this: The last interview Thomas Disch gave can be found as a podcast at the Bat Segundo Show. Meanwhile, it’s been three days since his death and the New York Times apparently still doesn’t list an obituary for him.

U Can’t Parse This

I freely admit I have the attention span — oooh, shiny! — of a magpie. After all, that’s why I blog. When I stumble across an infelicitous or puzzling phrase in my reading, it tends to distract me, sometimes stop me cold. Here are some instances from just this morning. Be honest with me — [...]

Q and A with Stephen P. Ryder

It happens more often than you might think: I link here at CvilleWords to some interesting site I’ve found in my journeys across the World Wide Web, and within a few hours or days someone leaves a comment letting me know that my latest find was right here in my backyard all the time. Charlottesville [...]

C Me @ the DP

Just snagged a link at the newly redesigned DailyProgress.com. Thanks, Matthew!

Not every successful is the seed of a good book

This NYT review of What Shamu Taught Me begins to fall apart in the fourth paragraph; by the end of the column it reads like this: Sutherland has a breezy style, animal metaphors can make one She refers to Scott as her “cagemate” “Big Dog,” and in the acknowledgments she offers her editor a “bucket [...]

Book Festival sessions live on line

Where have I been all my life? Barely conscious, I guess, because I didn’t know the Book Festival sessions that take place in the City Council Chamber are being streamed live over the Internet! Click on “Streamed Live” and wait for the player to load.

That’s not funny!

I’ve been disturbed by the recent kerfuffle over some “offensive” cartoons in the Cavalier Daily, the student newspaper of the University of Virginia. Perhaps you read about the controversy in the Daily Progress: The Cavalier Daily, the student-run newspaper of the University of Virginia, expressed regret Saturday for publishing two comic strips that offended Christians. [...]

Barbara blogs!

This item from the Hook caught my eye: Best sign hell is freezing over: Local writer/typewriter loyalist Barbara Rich starts a blog called “A Slice of Liberal Tongue on Wry.” I left a comment on the item asking for the URL of Barbara’s blog, and reporter Lisa Provence came through with the 411: A Slice [...]