Sunday Salon: Julie Orringer & Karen Russell

-
Happy Sunday, everyone! I've been sick most of the week with a sinus infection, but I'm almost feeling back to normal. This afternoon Mr. Nomadreader and I are going to see the Oscar shorts (animated and live action). We went last year and had a fantastic time, and I'm looking forward to seeing how this year's crop measures up. Tonight, we'll be cooking dinner at home, something we rarely do together given our disparate schedules. Then I'll be watching the BAFTA (the British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Film Awards tonight on BBC America.

Julie Orringer & Karen Russell Recap
Thursday afternoon, I was able to see the New York State Writers Institute seminar featuring Julie Orringer and Karen Russell. Last week I reviewed both of their novels. The crowd was quite good. The tradition at UAlbany is to have an upper-level English course whose content comes from the Visiting Writers series, so there is usually a contingent of semi-enthusiastic undergraduates who have read their work (typically short stories). The rest of the audience are literary geeks who simply want to be there.

The timing was fantastic. The Invisible Bridge just came out in paperback and Julie was nominated for the Sami Rohr prize, which the Jewish Book Council awards in alternate years to works of fiction that explore Jewish values. Swamplandia! was released last week and was featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review last Sunday. Both writers exhibited a genuine respect for each other as writers and their shared editor, Jordan.

(left to right): Edward Schwarszchild, UAlbany professor; Julie
Orringer; Karen Russell; Donald Faulkner, Director of NYSWI
As someone who greatly prefers novels to short stories, I was more interested in those parts of the conversation. Both Julie and Karen mentioned beginning as short story writers because what they were reading as undergraduates were short stories and their graduate writing programs emphasized short stories.

One of my favorite moments was Julie's description of fiction-writing as "considering the connections between things" and "the strange surprises of life." Those themes are quite apparent in The Invisible Bridge. Karen mentioned how much she enjoys short stories because you can take bigger risks as a writer.

Most of the discussion was about writing rather than reading, which is interesting to me, but as someone who read both of their novels, I wish more questions had been asked about specific works. I did find it interesting they both agreed it's easier to write about a place when you're not living there anymore, which struck me as counterintuitive initially, but it's a statement I've found myself pondering quite deeply since Thursday night.

Coming up on the blog this week:


As an Amazon affiliate, I receive a small commission when you make a purchase through any of the above links. Thank you!

Comments

  1. AmusedFebruary 13, 2011 at 1:16 PM

    Sounds like an interesting panel discussion! I'm jealous :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Trish @ Love, Laughter, InsanityFebruary 13, 2011 at 3:44 PM

    I've only been to a few author readings or events but have always been struck by how much of the discussion is focused on the actual writing process than the books.

    ReplyDelete
  3. TiFebruary 15, 2011 at 2:03 PM

    I will be reading The Invisible Bridge this year (at some point). Just trying to work it all in.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to comment. Happy reading!

Popular posts from this blog

book review: A Dangerous Place by Jacqueline Winspear

-
Image
The backstory: A Dangerous Place  is the eleventh historical mystery featuring Maisie Dobbs. My reviews of the other eleven (plus Winspear's stand alone historical novel) are in my Book Review Database . The basics: Set four years after the last Maisie Dobbs novel, Leaving Everything Most Loved , in A Dangerous Place , we meet up with Maisie in Gibraltar in 1927 during the Spanish Civil War. She gets off her England-bound ship in Gibraltar because she's not quite ready to return. Note: this review contains spoilers about what happened in those four years of Maisie's life between books, all of which are revealed in this novel's first thirty pages.  My thoughts: Sunday I wrote about the Maisie Mail I received. These postcards appear in the book itself, along with many others. After setting the stage in Gibraltar in the opening pages (Maisie stumbles upon a dead body), Winspear recounts the last four years of Maisie's life in the form of postcards, letters, an
Read more

book review: Run by Ann Patchett

-
Image
The backstory: After loving State of Wonder  ( my review ), I set out to read all of Ann Patchett's books. The basics: Run  is the story of the Doyle family: Bernard, an Irish Catholic ex-mayor of Boston, his deceased wife Bernadette, their adult son Sullivan, and their two adopted college ages sons, Tip and Teddy, who are biological brothers. My thoughts: I'm beginning to think Ann Patchett is my soul sister. Her writing reaches me deeply, and I've adored everything she's written. It was a special treat to read Run , the novel of hers I knew the least about going in. Although I had the framework of two of her novels and one memoir, I didn't know what to expect. Run  isn't as universally loved as some of her other works, so I was particularly curious to see how it measured up. Admittedly, Run  started off slowly for me. It took two chapters to really get into the heart of the story, but once it happened, I was hooked. One of the things I love most about
Read more

book review: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

-
Image
The backstory: Gilead  won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005, the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2004, and was longlisted for the Orange Prize in 2006. The basics: As Rev. Ames nears the end of his life in the 1950's, he begins a letter to his young son because Ames realizes his son is too young to really know him. Gilead  is that letter. My thoughts: Gilead  is a novel I'm been meaning to read for years. It's a character-driven, Midwestern narrative by one of our best contemporary writers. It should be a novel I love, yet I struggled to finish it and admit I was wowed by neither the story nor the writing. Gilead  seemed almost stream-of-consciousness at first. I appreciated that Robinson jumped right in: this novel is a letter from father to son; the reader's ignorance of these two characters is not the focus. As the novel progressed, more details began to be filled in, and the reader begins to understand the characters, setting and purpose. I enjoyed the fir
Read more