Citizenship | Literature
Select novels, short stories, and nonfiction on contemporary life.
Ben East’s nonfiction debut recounts how JFK’s bold experiment shaped diplomatic careers and influenced modern American diplomacy.
Read, Listen, Watch
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In The Family Hightower Brian Francis Slattery unspools a tale of global crime and capitalism spanning the last century. An example of his creative storytelling: Slattery introduces one of the novel’s most noble characters when she’s already carved into a disemboweled corpse, skin all sown up in jagged stitches. Dare the reader care about this eviscerated entity as the narrative delves…
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You only need about 11 minutes 30 seconds (less if you skip the intro!) to listen to Jess Walter read his short story “Cheston”. Damn funny. Visit Episode 1 of A Tiny Sense of Accomplishment. Stick around longer and hear another great piece by Sherman Alexie.
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The New York Times carries this thoughtful piece by Teddy Wayne on writers’ uses of social media to promote their work. Its a reminder of the line between shameless braggadocio and good-faith efforts to put our work before the public eye.
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Muller can’t get a stiffy. That shouldn’t be a problem for protagonist Sam Bennett, but it is, because Sam’s wife wants a grandchild. And Sam’s daughter is married to Muller, a talented hypochondriac and flabby Renaissance man, Sam’s foil with a killer recipe for pot brownies who can’t, for the life of him, get a…
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Amy Mason of Bristol and Rachel Fenton of Auckland both move on to the final round. May their hearts pound with healthy anticipation until the winner is announced in October! Extracts from their work, and the work of eight more shortlisted writers for the 2014 Prize, are available in e-Book format.
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Congrats to First-Prize Winner Gregory Hill! Looking forward to reading The Lonesome Trials of Johnny Riles when it comes out, and East of Denver in the meantime. The Lonesome Trials of Johnny Riles (novel) by Gregory Hill (Colorado) It’s autumn of 1975 and Rancher Johnny Riles is in a rough patch. He’s drunk, he’s depressed, his…
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The University of New Haven posted this article today: WEST HAVEN, CONN. — Look up Ben East on Amazon and adventure books pop out at you. But it’s not THAT Ben East – an American outdoorsman and writer throughout much of the last century – that we are talking about. We’re talking about Ben East,…
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Beneath the surface of Black River, the taut debut by S.M. Hulse, flows the grey enigma of ultimate justice. The narrative forces the reader to ask: Does a recidivist criminal capable of torture, yet claiming to have found Jesus, deserve parole? Or would such redemption be an injustice to the man he brutalized decades earlier? By…
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Extracts from the work of shortlisted novelists for the 2014 Dundee International Book Prize are now available in e-Book format. Priced to move at $0.00! Congratulations to my shortlisted compadres Sheena Lambert of Dublin, Rachel Fenton of Auckland, Amy Mason of Bristol, Veronica Birch of the West Country, Rosaliene Bacchus of California, Jasper Dorgan of Wiltshire, Suzy Norman of…
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Leapfrog Press announced their fiction contest results for 2014. My manuscript for Sea Never Dry was named a semifinalist. Thick with spies and fetish priests, Internet fraudsters and the orphans turning a buck on Ghana’s e-waste ash heaps, Sea Never Dry centers on the conflict between Western development efforts and lucrative criminal activity in the developing world. Read More Congrats to the…
Ben East Books 