Christopher Barzak's Blog, page 9

Off to the Nebula Awards weekend in Cocoa Beach, Florida tomorrow morning. This is the second time I've been nominated for a Nebula. The first time was in 2007 for my novelette, The Language of Moths, which you can read by clicking here if you missed it when it came out (I really need to publish a short story collection. Okay, I don't *need* to, but I would *like* to). It's always exciting to be nominated for such a wonderful award as the Nebula. I plan to enjoy the weekend no matter...

My last class for my MFA program at Chatham starts tomorrow. It's a Multi-Genre Creative Writing Workshop, which means the participants can submit things from any genre, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, plays, etc, for the workshop to consider. There's me and one other fiction writer in the class, one nonfiction writer, and three poets, I believe. Along with submitting a piece weekly for the next twelve weeks, and critiquing each others stuff, there are a few books we're reading to discuss...

School is out. I'm writing again. It's Friday and this week, my first week of freedom of time, I've managed to write 3600 words. Have completed a chapter and started a new one. This is what I'm talking about. Oh, summer, how I have missed you. Hopefully by the end of August, I'll have a completed novel.

Last month I successfully defended my MFA thesis at Chatham University in Pittsburgh and will graduate this August. This means next year, though still teaching full time at Youngstown...

Our production of W;t has garnered rave reviews so far from critics and audience members alike. Check out Milan Paurich's preview interview with Robert Dennick Joki, who really stepped outside of his traditional style of campy, fun theater to nail this bitter, tender, complex drama; and his stellar review of the show (which he says transcends art and theater – that's the acting chops...

Joseph Mallozzi hosts a book of the month club over at his very popular blog.  This month The Love We Share Without Knowing is the selection.  Joe posted a great response to the book and then opened the comments section up for questions from his fellow readers.  Today my responses went up.  We talked about all sorts of things:  genre writing versus literary, Japan, my life there, the making of my book.  If you're interested you should teleport over to Joe's original post on the book, and...

According to Jeff VanderMeer on The Best of 2009:

"Interfictions 2 edited by Delia Sherman & Christopher Barzak was a significant step up in quality from the first volume. Contributors included Lavie Tidhar, Brian Francis Slattery, Peter M. Ball, Alan DeNiro, M. Rickert, and Theodora Goss. Intended to showcase interstitial fiction, this volume also featured some of the most experimental and formally daring genre fiction of the year. In this respect,Interfictions 2 not only did a fine job of...

Following on the heels of the Beastly Bride anthology mentioned in my last post, fabulous editor Ellen Datlow announced on her blog today that one of her and Terri Windling's new anthologies has been completed and turned in to their editor at HarperCollins:

Teeth

Table of Contents

Introduction by Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow

Things to Know About Being Dead by Genevieve Valentine

All Smiles by Steve Berman

Gap Year by Christopher Barzak

Bloody Sunrise by Neil Gaiman

Flying by Delia Sherman

Vampire...

I mentioned last year that the newest volume of the mythic fiction series edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling would be released this coming spring, and here we are, a couple of days after its release date.  The Beastly Bride.  This is a great anthology of fiction for young adults and adults alike.  Here's a description from editor Terri Windling:

The fourth volume in the Mythic Fiction series contains beastly brides, animal bridegrooms, shape-shifters, were-creatures, and other stories...

Dear internet drifting jellyfish,

Have you read any books by author Karin Lowachee?  Well, if not, now is your chance to start by picking up her newest novel, released just yesterday by Orbit Books.  It's called Gaslight Dogs, and it sounds like a wonderful fantasy novel.  Here's a description:

At the edge of the known world, an ancient nomadic tribe faces a new enemy-an Empire fueled by technology and war.

A young spiritwalker of the Aniw and a captain in the Ciracusan army find themselves...

I'm reading David Shields' new book, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto.  It's a really engaging nonlinear, non narrative, at times lyrical essay, always structured by way of collage or mosaic, appropriating snippets of ideas from other writers, thinkers, poets, and philosophers and critics, arranging in a mash-up style, voices layered over one another without attribution (until the last pages of the book, by compulsion of Shields' publisher), that approaches the American need–no, hunger–for...