In my new novel, This Is Me, Debbi, David, I try to walk the line—hopefully with some success—between formulaic writing and being original and honest. It is formulaic in that it is a quest story and a road story, original in the uniqueness of the characters, and honest in that all the characters are flawed … Read more
Olympia, Washington author Alec Clayton, author of The Backside of Nowhere and the “Freedom Trilogy,” kicks off his latest novel, This Is Me, Debbi, David, with a series of readings and book talks with actor Amanda Kemp. Amanda Kemp In addition to her second year with Animal Fire Theatre’s Shakespeare in the Park, Amanda has … Read more
This is an oldy but goodie, Jack Butler’s Practicing Zen Without a License – “A grand and funny satire on the human tendency to indulge in stuffy metaphysics” – essays on Zen from many masters, including Wingo, Cassidy, Turble-Tribble, Elijah Lee Roswell, The No Poet, Jody Nightwood, OB Wanda (Roshi) and Ruby Tuesday. This review … Read more
A few years ago I told a story at Story Oly, Olympia’s monthly story slam, about my adventures and misadventures while hitchhiking to New York from Mississippi in 1973. Folks laughed a lot at the story, so I wrote it as a short story for Creative Colloquy and read it at a couple of their … Read more
Lynn Savage is the author of Mr. Klein’s Wild Ride. Mud Flat Press sat down with Lynn (via email) to question her about the book. MFP: Gary and Summer Klein’s lives are shaken when Gary is offered the job of publicizing “Panerotic,” the new “Disneyland of Sex.” Beyond that basic description and avoiding spoilers, … Read more
In a letter to me sometime around 1980 the poet Harry Calhoun raved about Flannery O’Connor’s short stories so much that I ran out to the local bookstore and bought Flannery O’Conner the Complete Stories. As well as I can remember, the only thing I had read of hers at the time was “A Good … Read more
My reading and book talk at Panorama, a retirement community in Lacey, Washington, went well. Much of the discussion centered on race, as it often does when talking about Tupelo. I said that although race was an underlying theme in the book, it’s really about much more than that. It’s about Kevin Lumpkin and his … Read more
From Ricker Winsor: “I am out drawing in ink with my portable table. It is easier now than with all the oil paint and I think my ink drawings are my strongest expression in any case. I am in Surabaya not far from home, in an area called Kenjaran which has a huge golden Buddha … Read more
“Hell can’t be no hotter than a Mississippi July. The heat don’t bother a kid, though. Not the heat nor the scratches nor the bugs. She don’t know how it is killing her. It takes all of the flexibility out, it scrapes you like scraping a plate to the dogs.” – Jack Butler, “Country Girl” … Read more