Starred Kirkus Review for BYSYOFS
The first official review of Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self is a starred review from Kirkus. You can read it here or here.
Author: Danielle
Rumors of Plot’s Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
Lately I have been lobbying (well, lobbying from the deadline imposed isolation of my apartment, so mostly lobbying to my cat, but now to all of you fine folk) for more recognition for plot. Plot has a bad reputation. To call something “plot-driven” is to call it tawdry and anti-intellectual and unconcerned with things like language and […]
Let Your Subconscious Do Its Job
Last weekend I had a great time at the AIW conference, where I was on a panel with David Taylor, Paula Whyman, and Mary Kay Zuravleff. We started off talking about editorial strategies– how to gain a sense of perspective about your own work– but in the Q and A, the topic of abandonment kept […]
Southern by the Grace of… Amy Hempel?
I’ve just finished reading an advanced copy the 25th anniversary edition of New Stories From The South, guest edited by Amy Hempel. My story, Someone Ought to Tell Her There’s Nowhere to Go, which was first published in A Public Space, and will also be in my collection and in this year’s Best American Short Stories, is included in […]
Upcoming Events and Advanced Praise
On June 10th, I’ll be reading with Martha Southgate and Lauren Grodstein at Brooklyn Reading Works at the Old Stone House. The theme of the reading is “People Make Mistakes”: http://onlytheblogknowsbrooklyn.com/2010/05/30/brw-presents-people-make-mistakes-fiction-curated-by-marthat-southgate/ On June 12th, I’ll be speaking in a panel on learning to edit your own work at American Independent Writers’ annual conference, on GW’s […]
A Note on the Collection’s Title
I just answered a series of publicity questions about the book, and since I really love the title, and people sometimes ask me about it, I thought it would be worth expanding on my discussion of the title here. The title and epigraph of Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self come from The Bridge […]
Smart Conversations About MFA Programs
This post is a little late and very long, so most of it is below the jump. Per my previous post, I do not believe that MFA programs are killing US literature, or that they do more harm than good. I do believe though that they do some things much better than others, and […]
Stupid Conversations About MFA Programs
I waited so long to have a blog that it turns out I actually have a lot to say about MFA programs, so I’ve divided this into two posts: one about the legitimate conversations we might be having about MFA programs and what they can and can’t do, and one about the stupid conversations that […]
The Book as Physical Object
A few weeks ago, I got the galleys of my short story collection in the mail. Although it still needed to be proofread, and printed in its official hardcover form, holding the book in my hand made me truly start to think of it as “real.” I thought about this in light of the ongoing […]
Musings on the Black Book Section
A while back, I wrote a short piece for PEN American, working through some of my ambivalence about the “black book” section in a lot of US bookstores. Here’s the opening: I first understood what people meant when they spoke of intangible white privilege when I realized that I read differently than other people. Literature […]
Danielle Valore Evans 