Christopher Barzak

Category: Recommendations

  • Interfictions update

    Just a heads up.  Very soon this fall the second volume of Interfictions, which I co-edited with Delia Sherman, will be appearing.  And even sooner than the book is released, we’ll be releasing a new story in the Interfictions Online Annex every week until the book appears. I very much hope that readers like what…

  • A small taste of America in decline

    An interactive segmented video about my home region’s loss of industry over the past thirty years, and how it may now lose its very last major manufacturer in GM.  It’s very well made, though a sad reality, and one that is now in the new century becoming the reality of more and more communities in…

  • Reading at Thurber House

    Last week was a big week for me.  Three nice things happened. 1. It was my birthday.  Fun times, growing old. 2. I got to reconnect with an old friend from college.  Fun times, rehashing when I was a youngster. 3. I read at Thurber House, In Columbus, Ohio, where the writer Jamese Thurber is…

  • Dirda on classics and genre literature

    Michael Dirda of the Washington Post delivers a great lecture at The Center for the Book in D.C., in which he discusses his new book which looks at 100 classic books of literature that aren’t your grandpa’s “classics”, which means books that a while back would have been ignored by elitists and classicists who categorically…

  • Edmond Hamilton Day

    People who think small towns are uncool are crazy.  Kinsman, OH (shout out!) is proof of the opposite.  They have Clarence Darrow Day, and now Edmond Hamilton Day.   In the future, there should also be a Leigh Brackett Day, with The Empire Strikes Back on a big screen in the town square all day…

  • Next Week

    If anyone out there will be nearby to Columbus next Wednesday on July 22nd, you should totally come out and see me read along with David Giffels and James J. Siegel at Thurber House’s literary picnic evening for emerging voices in Ohio writing.  It’ll be fun, and the menu looks great. I’m still not sure…

  • Stonewall at 40

    Rick Bowes writes a guest blog over at Matt Cheney’s blog The Mumpsimus, on Stonewall forty years later.  Read it.  It’s not only good, it’s a great perspective.

  • Charlie Brooker on the American News Media. Funny

    Seriously funny, seriously pathetic, seriously.  Thanks to my friend James in Manchester for sending me this.

  • Out of this furnace

    I’ve been reading a novel called “Out of this Furnace” for one of my summer courses.  It’s by Thomas Bell, an author from Braddock, Pennsylvania who grew up in a steel mill family.  The novel is semi-autobiographical, following three generations of a Slovak immigrant family from the turn of the century through the thirties.  The…

  • Wherefore art thou, Juliet

    Today we bring you an awesome interview with the editor of my first two books, Juliet Ulman.  Okay, so “we” don’t bring it to you, Jeff Vandermeer does, over at Amazon.com’s blog, Omnivoracious.  Here’s a connecting pass to it.  And if you like reading Juliet’s really smart and insightful perspective on editing, publishing, and the…