April 17th, 2013
angelamelamud
Zoom An interactive map of literary L.A., created by the Los Angeles Times’ book staff.

An interactive map of literary L.A., created by the Los Angeles Times’ book staff.

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Los Angeles literary interactive books landmarks bookstores authors maps
September 27th, 2012
picadorbooks
Zoom Tickets are still available to see Paul Auster in conversation with Paul Holdengräber on Monday, October 1 at the New York Public Library. Get them here, and don’t forget to use coupon code “WINTERJOURNAL” to receive $10 off general admission tickets. See you there!

Tickets are still available to see Paul Auster in conversation with Paul Holdengräber on Monday, October 1 at the New York Public Library. Get them here, and don’t forget to use coupon code “WINTERJOURNAL” to receive $10 off general admission tickets.

See you there!

Reblogged from LIVE from the NYPL
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lit books authors new york public library paul auster events
September 21st, 2012
picadorbooks

Brooklyn Book Festival Breakdown

Literary types from all over will flock to Brooklyn this weekend for the Brooklyn Book Festival, where more than 280 authors will put on more than 104 events over the course of the weekend.

Picador is lucky to have several authors (Paul Auster, Siri Hustvedt, Thomas Frank, Sheila Heti, and more) participating. Click through to see what events we’ll be attending this weekend. See you there, fellow book nerds!

Read More

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lit brooklyn book festival events authors brooklyn
September 21st, 2012
picadorbooks

Pulitzer Prize-winning author (and Vogue model) Jeffrey Eugenides stopped by the Flatiron building today to sign copies of The Marriage Plot for a few lucky Macmillan employees.

Tonight, he will be at powerHouse Arena at 7 PM, his only New York City event scheduled for this fall. Tickets are $5, and still available here.

22 notes·
lit books authors jeffrey eugenides the marriage plot events powerhouse arena flatiron
September 18th, 2012
awaagner
Zoom Jeffrey Eugenides answered questions about college, sex, and writing for the Arizona State University State Press. Check out what advice the bestselling author had for today’s college students here. Question: Much is made of “sex on campus.” Do you think the college campus lifestyle enhances, diminishes, or changes at all the thrill of a sexual experience? Jeffrey Eugenides: The signal event of my first-year orientation was the showing of an X-rated film called “Debbie Does Dallas.” This was long before porn had gone mainstream on the Internet. Most of my fellow 18 year olds had never seen anything like it before, and if we had, we’d certainly never watched it with members of the opposite sex around. But now we were in college. We were, by universal agreement, all grown up. And so we sat there watching the acts being performed on the screen, acting as though it was funny to us, or reason to cheer or holler. I remember one jock shouting, “Why doesn’t my girlfriend do it like that?” In actuality, we were all extremely uncomfortable. College, we’d been told, was going to feature a lot of sex. But we weren’t quite ready for the rules to change so quickly. We had to pretend to be more seasoned and blasé about the whole thing than we actually were. I don’t remember a single thing about that movie. All I remember was how everyone was trying to pretend to be someone they weren’t yet and maybe never would be. In my own case, the “college campus lifestyle” didn’t enhance the thrill of sexual experience, certainly not my first year. That was because I was having no sexual experience. As I say in “The Marriage Plot,” “In the sexual hierarchy of college, freshman males ranked at the very bottom.” The freedom was there, the dorm room was ready, but the opportunities were not forthcoming. As the years passed, things got better. The explorations, physical, emotional and intellectual began. It turned out to be nothing like “Debbie Does Dallas.” It was much better than that because the women were real.

Jeffrey Eugenides answered questions about college, sex, and writing for the Arizona State University State Press. Check out what advice the bestselling author had for today’s college students here.

Question: Much is made of “sex on campus.” Do you think the college campus lifestyle enhances, diminishes, or changes at all the thrill of a sexual experience?

Jeffrey Eugenides: The signal event of my first-year orientation was the showing of an X-rated film called “Debbie Does Dallas.” This was long before porn had gone mainstream on the Internet. Most of my fellow 18 year olds had never seen anything like it before, and if we had, we’d certainly never watched it with members of the opposite sex around. But now we were in college. We were, by universal agreement, all grown up.

And so we sat there watching the acts being performed on the screen, acting as though it was funny to us, or reason to cheer or holler. I remember one jock shouting, “Why doesn’t my girlfriend do it like that?” In actuality, we were all extremely uncomfortable. College, we’d been told, was going to feature a lot of sex. But we weren’t quite ready for the rules to change so quickly. We had to pretend to be more seasoned and blasé about the whole thing than we actually were. I don’t remember a single thing about that movie. All I remember was how everyone was trying to pretend to be someone they weren’t yet and maybe never would be.

In my own case, the “college campus lifestyle” didn’t enhance the thrill of sexual experience, certainly not my first year. That was because I was having no sexual experience. As I say in “The Marriage Plot,” “In the sexual hierarchy of college, freshman males ranked at the very bottom.” The freedom was there, the dorm room was ready, but the opportunities were not forthcoming. As the years passed, things got better. The explorations, physical, emotional and intellectual began. It turned out to be nothing like “Debbie Does Dallas.” It was much better than that because the women were real.

1 note·
lit books college sex advice authors interview
June 7th, 2012
justinhargett

This week Picador is publishing Bill Loehfelm’s The Devil She Knows, a “gritty and lyrical” crime novel set in the seedy underbelly of Staten Island. To celebrate we’ll be featuring the book here on the Tumblr for the rest of the week. Below, Bill lays out five characters who influenced the creation of his heroine, Maureen Coughlin.

Writers get asked a lot about their influences, a tough subject to address. I feel I often discover what influenced me in retrospect, when I re-read a book or re-watch a movie for the first time in years and I notice something in them that I see in my own work. Maureen Coughlin is a character I developed over many years. Here are five women who I think are embedded in her DNA:

5. Rowan Mayfair – The Witching Hour, by Anne Rice. Intelligent, talented, educated, powerful, sexual, fearless and dangerous Rowan Mayfair was everything I’d come to expect from a hero – except male.

4. Lt. Ellen Ripley – Aliens. She spends most of the movie surrounded by men with money and guns who think they know better, despite the fact that she knows more than them, and she ends up being nearly the last person standing, mostly because of her raw and electric will to survive. An old school “if you want it done right, do it yourself” hero.

3. Marion Ravenwood – Raiders of the Lost Ark. She’s not quite the feminist icon I thought she was when I was younger, she does spend much of the film as a damsel in distress, though a formidable one. Still, how many movie heroines debut by winning a drinking contest, sucker punching an ex-boyfriend and putting a bullet through the head of a Gestapo enforcer? To me, she was always much more beautiful tending bar in her braid than in that ridiculous dress.

2. Carrie Kelley as Robin – The Dark Knight Returns, by Frank Miller. She’s young, small, unskilled, untrained, plain and invisible to nearly everyone around her, including her parents. She both under and over estimates her own bravery, smarts, and toughness. She doesn’t see any reason why she should take shit from anyone, or why you should either. Being female never enters into it. What’s not to love?

1. Sarah Connor – Terminator/Terminator 2. A depiction of a woman as the renegade lone wolf hero that doesn’t just portray her as a woman acting manly; she’s more than a novelty act. Watch the two films back to back. The metamorphosis of Sarah Connor from clueless girl victim to determined soldier is extraordinary. In the second film, I’ve always thought Linda Hamilton does a great job showing that confidence and terror are not mutually exclusive emotions. The asylum escape scene in T2 is classic. There’s a shot during that scene where Sarah Connor trots down the hall, eyes wary, nightstick in one hand, clad in sweats and a T-shirt, hair back in a ponytail. You can just tell her brain is running a thousand miles an hour. I re-watched the film less than a year ago and it left me thinking, “Well, that explains a lot.” 

For more of a peek into Bill Loehfelm’s brain space, head over to his Tumblr.

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lit crime fiction authors writing inspiration bill loehfelm the devil she knows
May 25th, 2012
eliannakan
Zoom How could we resist?

How could we resist?

6 notes·
writing authors publishing lit pitches lol
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