LaurenGroff.com http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news RSS feed for Lauren Groff's site en webmaster@webroot-hosting.com Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:32:59 -0700 1440 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=201003 Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:32:59 MST So. The book is in to my editor as of this morning, and now I can sleep again. I had checked out of my life for a little while there, and was relieved to find it still here when I looked up again. Coated with grime? Yes. Grumpy and neglected? Indeed. But thanks to the superhero efforts of my husband, mainly, everything ran smoothly and everyone survived. He is my Alice B. Toklas, sans moustache. And if he ever wrote a cookbook, it would be titled something like "From My Pot to Yours: One Man's Search for The Perfect Vegetarian Crockpot recipe." We had crockpot stuffed peppers, crockpot chi blog67 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=201001 Sat, 30 Jan 2010 08:17:29 MST When you write, you always wish that your years of thought and hard work and rewriting will result in a magical concoction that will seduce the mental pants off your readers and turn them into quivering little jellies at your feet, unable to look up the full expanse of you--magnificent, you!--forcing them to cover their eyes because otherwise the light from your brilliance will make them go blind. This, friends, never happens; never-with-a-heaping-of-nuts with an early draft. I know this. And yet I always hope. So I shouldn't have been surprised--nay, distraught! for days! silly Lauren!--w blog66 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=201001 Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:14:48 MST My husband, who normally has the temperament of a fifteenth-century martyr mid-flame, leveled with me yesterday, saying "Oh my god. You're totally unbearable right now, Leggy." Which is what my loved ones call me, most particularly when I'm being unbearable. I know it. I am. The problem, you see, is that my otherwise charming and beautiful agent has had the next novel in his ruddy paws since Thursday, and the anxiety is just about killing me. I've averaged a six-mile run every day since then. I've read eight books and written precisely three words and spent an hour at the bakery today decid blog65 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=201001 Sat, 09 Jan 2010 09:06:27 MST is coming to town. That's right, the man behind the magnificent novels The Brief History of the Dead and the Truth about Celia, and the story collections Things That Fall From the Sky, and The View From the Seventh Layer; recipient of practically every prize on Earth; and among the Granta-nominated Best American Novelists under 35 (with which I concur wholeheartedly) will be at the Headquarters Branch of the Library tomorrow, Sunday January 10th, at 1:00 pm. Come one, come all! Hear one of the best practitioners of American fiction in person as he reads from his work! Gape in stunned awe a blog64 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=201001 Mon, 04 Jan 2010 20:32:39 MST ...I never "squawk." How unbecoming. The month away from the digital age was both eerie and fulfilling, like a long day spent at a drippy old spa in Budapest. I came into 2010 full of energy, my brain winnowed and lean, calmer than I have been since I discovered VAX in college. VAX, for those who are too young or too old, was an early blogroll from the not-quite-punch-card computer days, when a person on the network posted "plans" in archaic sans-serif fonts, and could find out what other people's "plans" were by "fingering" them. As with all addictive personalities at Amherst at that time, blog62 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=201001 Fri, 01 Jan 2010 17:22:53 MST Hey all, this is Lauren's husband Clay here. While Lauren was having her "Analog December" we thought it would be fun if I kept the blog going, sort of like when unknowns substitute for your friendly local or npr news commentator during the holidays. It never happened though, for no good reason other than I'm not that good about blogging. Now that it's 2010, Lauren can come back (thank goodness--I was getting a bit tired of answering her phone). In fact, she immediately squawked about my inattention to the blog, and so I thought I should at least post once. Happy New Years! blog61 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200911 Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:48:27 MST It has been established, by now, that I'm not much of a modern girl (almost wrote gal, but realized it was a little too throw-backy even for me). I see no need for a television, have a relationship with automobiles that is wary at best, and have demonstrated repeatedly that my communication skills were formed for the epistolary age and not the age of email. I have yet to get my iPod nano to work, or whatever it's called, and didn't realize until yesterday that there was a movie app on the iPhone. In fact, I've often marveled at the little mouse who runs the treadmill that powers the iPhone. He blog60 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200911 Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:40:08 MST (A Bad Poem Taken From Actual Headlines In the Gainesville Sun) Thank goodness! UF has a plan for zombie invasions. Floridians urged to keep an eye on Ida. HIPPY chosen as a U.S. model. Naked biker ends up wearing handcuffs. Local girl, 11, helps deliver sister. Confused fox wanders into Gainesville Kmart. Nightclubs for plus-size weighing in. Deputies: Bogus officer sets up pat-down opportunities. GPD seeks pair of rapists. UF police looking for flasher. Report: Man rips off girlfriend's weave. Gainesville gets a view of the terminator. Gainesville man says he hid from blog58 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200911 Sat, 07 Nov 2009 06:57:40 MST Some very excellent events* coming up: --November 12, Lake City To toot my own horn, I'll be reading at the Columbia County Public Library at 7:00. 308 NW Columbia Avenue, Lake City. Free! I'll even show you pictures of the baby, if you ask. Toot. Toot. *All right, I don't know if this one will be a "very excellent" event, but I will try my best to make it so. --Nov 12-14, Gainesville 2009 (University of) Florida Writers' Festival. Readings and informal talks by Chris Adrian, Chris Bachelder, Chris Tusa, and C.D. Wright. Except where otherwise noted, all events will ta blog57 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200910 Sun, 25 Oct 2009 07:22:36 MST Off early this morning for Greenville, South Carolina, where I'll be doing a very fun trio of events, invited by the magical Ashley Warlick ("The Summer Before June"; "Seek the Living") and Mindy Friddle ("Secret Keepers"). First, this afternoon, from 2-5 I'll be giving at talk at The Writing Room about what one does after a first draft (it's a bit more involved than this, but...revise, revise, don't fret too much, revise, rewrite, fret, weep, send out, don't fret, begin anew). Tomorrow, I'll be going to talk with Ashley's "brilliant" (her words, and I'm sure they are) high school writer blog55 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200910 Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:52:33 MST I am shamed into this post by a very sweet young Latino writer who wrote to me two days ago, whom I intended to respond to and did not--yet--and who wrote again today to say he thought it was mean and inconsiderate of me not to respond to his email. George, I am very sorry. Mea culpa. I didn't intend to be mean. I would like, very much, to blame this whole mess on my very high-energy toddler, or my incontinent dog dying of intestinal cancer, or the five separate houseguests who have stayed here in a three-week span, or the studio that we are creating in the garage with our bare hands, or blog54 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200910 Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:46:40 MST Postcard auction to benefit the lovely Boston organization Grub Street, including postcards by the likes of Pulitzer-winer Elizabeth Strout, lovely lady Lorrie Moore, Steve Almond, Josh Weil, Maud Casey, Peter Orner, Pagan Kennedy, James Franco (that's right! of Pineapple Express--he has story collection coming out soon, I hear) and others. Including me. So if you have a few extra dollars, put on your charity cap and sling that cash in Grub Street's direction. blog53 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200909 Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:54:51 MST Sources tell me that my story, "Sir Fleeting," which came out last year in One Story, is one of the 100 Notable Stories in both of this year's editions of Best American Short Stories, edited by Alice Sebold, and Best American Nonrequired Reading, edited by Dave Eggers. Not quite as great as being among the chosen few actually printed, though still pretty nice. Better, even, than a Fourth of July Parade at noontime in a forgotten Upstate New York hamlet, replete with fire engines and blue cotton candy and the County Dairy Princess in purple spangles and elbow-gloves in someone's moldering Mo blog51 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200909 Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:52:56 MST Tomorrow I'm off to Tallahassee for a reading at The Warehouse (8:00pm), thanks to Erin Belieu and Mark Winegardner and all the splendid, fine folks at FSU (not to mention the lovely Jeannine Groff, who will be taking the munchkin to Sesame Street Live in my absence--just call her 'the sainted one'). Also: check out The Millions this week for a scientifically titrated expose on the absolutely objective Best Books of The Millenium (a mere nine years old). I was on the panel and should be weighing in enthusiastically with my personal top pick on Friday. blog49 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200909 Fri, 18 Sep 2009 18:06:50 MST I have exactly this much time for reading: between drinking my coffee and brushing my teeth. Between vacuuming and hand-tilling my garden patch during naptime (oh, Florida, you horrid bitch in summer, you sweet gentle flirt the rest of the year). Between feeding the baby one bite of butternut squash-apple mush and feeding him the next; provided, of course, that he doesn't choke. And, because we have never had a television, between the baby going to bed and our eating dinner and collapsing immediately into bed at about eight-thirty-ish. Not much time, but it adds up. Here's what I'm in love blog48 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200909 Tue, 15 Sep 2009 08:43:55 MST You Are Or You Aren't Saying you're semi- tropical's like saying you're only half crazy. The Latter What is scarier: actual alligators, or drunken football fans? I Don't Shop There, Okay? I Just Had To Pick Up A Prescription And Four Bucks Is Hard To Beat The Super Wal-Mart, Waldo Road. Orange and blue mulch. Saplings: plastic, too? Last Night On the porch, sweating, I was bitten thrice, even Though there's a damn screen. Dear Gators I would like to say I couldn't give a damn, but Tim Tebow's dreamy. Compost Cockroaches, so com- mon; have blog47 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200908 Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:50:57 MST Oh, yes, here it is: now that I've had the chance to digest Bread Loaf (pun intended! and cringeworthily bad!), here I am with the inside-inside scoop, the delicious little frozen cherry at the heart of the state-fair fried ice cream. Because, really, Bread Loaf IS where writers go when they die. (Note: I didn't say good writers, per se, because I'm sure there were plenty of good writers who didn't get a chance to go, and because I hadn't read everyone's work on the mountain and I am not in fact an expert in the general excellence of the Bread Loaf writer. Plus, because of my secularist-ag blog46 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200908 Mon, 17 Aug 2009 10:07:37 MST Before I try to describe Breadloaf, which is practically impossible to do without the use of photographs or, at least, three hundred pages, I'll say that I saw yesterday on my run a bluebird flitting among the underbrush; and it seemed to me, as the bird flicked and jerked in a small blue flash that it was the precise symbol of what this place is, with all its metaphorical weight (rainbows, lemondrops), and its deep-bone cheery essence. The sun shines all day in the fields here, and we drink gin-and-tonics at night, and sit for readings in the Little Theater and as the writers read, we wonder blog45 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200908 Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:55:14 MST I'm leaving tomorrow for Breadloaf, and can admit to a serious case of nerves. I tend to see clusters of humans--parties, State Fairs, funerals--as steeplechase races in which I leap and dodge and sprint to forestall the inadvertent and almost inevitable moment when I offend someone with a joke gone awry, a glass of wine drastically dropped (I do this sober), a mishearing, a lighthearted jab that makes someone well up, and on and on. And when those humans happen to be other writers--watch out. I'm pretty sure I'll end up being the dopey but well-meaning buffoon in someone's lighthearted satire blog44 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200908 Thu, 06 Aug 2009 17:43:52 MST For the past week I've been stretched thin as a Necco, my eentsy bits of spare time spent teaching. First, there was the Anhinga Writers' Conference in the Hilton here in Gainesville. I taught four classes, of ninety minutes apiece--it was, in general, a lovely experience--I got to meet Peter Meinke and felt like a rockstar because the auditorium where I taught could easily have sat over two hundred people. That my largest class was about fifty good souls meant that my voice echoed and I had to project. Good practice for wee-voiced me. And the students were, in general, well-behaved, extremely blog43 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200907 Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:40:09 MST This email came today, which gave me the biggest belly-laugh ever. Dear Lauren Groff, We are very sorry for the horrible delay. You probably had given up on hearing from us at [insert small lit journal name]. Not only are we very far behind in our reading, but your submission from late May 2004 got misplaced with several others in a file cabinet (in a folder ironically marked "Priority") and only recently came to light. At this late point, I thought I would just send you an email. Although "Fable Ophine" didn't work out for us all the way, we did enjoy reading it, and hope that blog42 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200907 Sun, 26 Jul 2009 12:45:44 MST Just back from a week away on the peninsula in Michigan, where trout leap from the lake into your boat and the trees are drupe-heavy and gently let their cherries fall into the road just so your wheels have something to skid on. We were a fluctuating group of six to eight in a cottage built as an big-person treehouse; we'd eat and swim and fish all day and play Trivial Pursuit at night, which is how I discovered the place in my brain that used to come up with the mot juste has become, somehow, a black pit into which all [insert absent thingy] are sucked. Email=impossible to attend to. Work=imp blog41 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200907 Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:51:15 MST Beck and I are back home at last, and ensconced in the house, in hiding from a Florida summer. First was a sleepless blitz of a trip to my parents in Cooperstown--one blink and it was over. The sun was mild. The lake was cold. We saw Crosby, Stills and Nash, and I won't say how sorry it made me to hear the new quaver in those old voices. We did get the chance to visit a nutty but lovely fine furniture maker in West Winfield, where my parents picked up a custom yellow-bellied slider turtle on rockers for the baby. He actually sits on a little carved saddle on the turtle's back and beams. Best. blog40 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200906 Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:35:10 MST Firefighter who took foot charged with theft. Officer to suspect: Stop punching yourself or I'll Tase you. Man accused of crashing SUV into office says he was high, not drunk. Lost, drunk man takes anger out on mailbox. Tent city on edge after attack. 'Tim Treebow' unveiled. Man claims devil made him hit pedestrian. Lake City man accused of beating girlfriend, stabbing self with fork. Deputies: Man flunks drug test, steals fridge full of urine. Police: Sons ignored mother lying on floor. *Headlines taken from the past few months of the Gainesville Sun blog39 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200906 Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:07:46 MST Two days home, and I'm still processing this past residential week at the Queens University MFA program. Holy intensity, Batman. I didn't anticipate practically everything great about the program: the talent of my co-faculty, the intelligence, work-ethic and dedication of the students, the ridiculous amount of good food that I ate, the late nights in the Providence Cafe and its 12-dollar glasses of wine, the amount of work that white dank little cell of a dorm room squeezed out of me, and the absolutely pervasive feeling of love and admiration and celebration involved in the program--I have blog38 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200905 Sat, 23 May 2009 05:49:12 MST The past month or so has been extremely quiet. It has rained for almost two weeks straight, Macondolike, which drives us indoors. I've lost my garage-apartment where I've been writing (my friends are moving,), and in the attempt to escape the evil internet, have been going to a cafe in the mornings to work. It is called Volta and, though housed in a parking garage, it is minimalist and light-filled and very clean. The coffee is excellent though ridiculously expensive. Hipsters abound. The clothing alone is a source of great wonderment. Eighties plastic sunglasses. Varieties of shiny leggings. blog37 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200905 Mon, 11 May 2009 12:40:15 MST Fact 1: In grad school at Wisconsin, I won a lovely award from the August Derleth Society, which I'm still very grateful for. Fact 2: Stephen King has been incredibly kind to me in my somewhat newish life as a writer, choosing a story of mine for Best American Short Stories, blurbing my novel, and doing an event in Saratoga with me (I'm ashamed to say I repaid him with dirt*). Fact 3: Turns out that Stephen King is slightly in debt to August Derleth: From the Teacher Edition of LITERARY CAVALCADE, May 1965: The Scholastic Magazine 1965 Writing Awards: Short Story (judged by Augus blog36 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200905 Thu, 07 May 2009 13:46:25 MST Once in every two or three years, I get the urge to read extremely short things. Call them short-shorts, microfictions, flash fictions, prose poems, what have you: I've never been adequately convinced that the above are not different shoots of the same eentsy weensy plant. My current fad is due to an attention span currently set at extremely low, beyond gnatlike, and as a corrective to my writing, which is growing freakishly long, stories going to 12,000 words, not even completed novels at over a hundred cool ones and growing (severe contraction, a la labor pains, to follow). I've been rea blog35 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200904 Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:50:29 MST This past week I've been in Sarasota and St. Petersburg; or, in other words, The Places People Think of When They Think of Florida. In Sarasota, we stayed in a palace on Bird Key, drank far too much on a windy porch overlooking the uplit bridge, and in my insomniac wandering actually spoke to a life-sized carved golfer who loomed up wraithlike in the dark. Twice. The first time I just thought he was my hard-of-hearing father-in-law frozen in the hope that I wouldn't see him creeping about the place in the middle of the night. On Sunday, we saw my studette sister place second in the St. Anth blog34 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200904 Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:32:35 MST I've hailed the delights of the Library book fair before, so I'll spare the rhapsodies this time around. Suffice it to say that I am now fifty dollars poorer and fifty books richer, including work by: Trevor, Butler, Mistry, Updike, Turgenev, Erdrich, Dillard, Bellow, Davies, Swift, Twain, Spark, Vaughn, Gaitskill, et cetera, PLUS a billion art books and children's books, including one by Barry Lopez (of Arctic Dreams splendor). At this rate, I may never have to buy another new book again. But the very best book I found was one I had the least hope for: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's Cross Cree blog33 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200904 Thu, 16 Apr 2009 13:13:27 MST 1) Back that asp up. 2) Don't believe the first person you call in a crisis: the nerdy, needle-voiced man on the other end who says "No ma'am, I'm afraid your computer is toast and I can't help you," may have had a (sadistically) strange sense of humor. Don't just hang up. Because the other guys you call will be super-nice and will promise all five years of your life back to you. 3) People are generous. Thank you for all of your advice--I am truly, deeply grateful. blog32 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200904 Wed, 15 Apr 2009 09:55:04 MST * Euphemi-cussing for the benefit of the infant in the room. The Computer is Dead: Or, Eulogy for Five Lost Years 1. The computer is dead. Long live the computer. 2. The computer is dead, hard-drive dead, all information upon it, also, dead. 3. The information contains: all the non-longhand drafts of everything written since and before 2003, when the computer was purchased, via a shiny beautiful and possibly unethical educational discount through Stanford, where one was presently going to stop working because one was moving to Madison, where one would begin graduate studies. 4. Drafts blog31 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200904 Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:32:52 MST All right. I'm officially a geek--but, oh, lordy, I found Glimmerglass Opera's summer mailer today and actually gave a little shriek of excitement. Not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR fantastic shows this summer, all centered around strong female leads. How many shows am I going to see? Every. Dang. One. First, there's Verdi's La Traviata, with courtesan Violetta's tragic love for Alfredo. Then, Rossini's La Cerentola, which is just Italian for Cinderella. Then a newer one--Menotti's Pulitzer-winning The Consul, about Magda Sorel, a woman in a desperate attempt to battle bureaucracy blog30 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200904 Mon, 13 Apr 2009 11:56:57 MST Most of the writers I know, it seems, are depressed right now. I just had an email from a friend of mine who asks "how could anyone write when everything seems so goddamned dire? And who the hell is buying books, anyway?" And it's true: the world seems to be falling as we're huddling here in our little coop of books, trying to pretend we don't see those shards of blue clattering around on the ground at our feet. I tried to remember a poem I thought I had read at some point (Seamus Heaney? Elizabeth Bishop? I spent an hour looking this morning) that addressed and seemed to solve this problem, blog29 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200904 Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:20:56 MST THE LADDER Tuesday slander reversals creeping sickness a forged will insomnia loss of hair detention theft cafard jealousy an accident in a restaurant inanition blog28 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200903 Fri, 27 Mar 2009 09:56:42 MST Lots of silence here, but only because life has been scramble-about-like-proverbial-headless-chickens wild. For most of a week, we had a pianist living in our hourse named Noreen Polera, who is the accompanist for the great young cellist Alexandre Bouzlov. We have a somewhat neglected piano sitting in our front hallway: because I'm not given to gratuitous displays of conspicuous consumption, it was the only thing I bought when I sold Monsters a few years ago, as a gift for my husband, because he had agreed to live with a bearish, neurotic, insomniac writer for years. (I had tried to buy an exp blog27 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200903 Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:55:21 MST A giant fossil sea monster found in the Arctic had a bite that would have been able to crush a 4x4 car, according to its discoverers. Researchers say the marine reptile, which measured an impressive 15m (50ft) long, had a bite force of about 45 tonnes (33,000lbs) per square inch. The creature's partial skull was dug up last summer in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard by a Norwegian-led team. Dubbed "Predator X", it patrolled the oceans some 147 million years ago. Its jaws may have been more powerful than those of a Tyrannosaurus rex, though estimates of the dinosaur's bite vary su blog26 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200903 Mon, 16 Mar 2009 11:31:35 MST "Many women writers have complained that fiction by women is undervalued because we undervalue the domestic and the personal as opposed to big manly subjects like war and whaling. It's an important point, but I think there's something deeper going on. In fact, there are men who write about intimate life and women who take on big public subjects. More different than the books themselves is the gendered framing of how we read them. Nobody says Henry James is a less ambitious writer because he wrote The Portrait of a Lady and not The Portrait of a Sea Captain. If The Corrections had been written blog25 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200903 Wed, 11 Mar 2009 07:50:06 MST ...you were one of either two creatures: the shy, wary, squinty-eyed kid who hid in the long grass when it was kickball time and could make embarrassing noises with bodyparts or ad hoc instruments (grassblades, combs, paperclips) and talked aloud to characters you read alive and believed that when you left the room all humans powered down like robots hitting the off-switch only to reanimate when you were about to come back in; or you were the slighty cool, slightly sarcastic, slightly witty other type who was pretty good in sports and school, though when you saw the moon on a certain summer ni blog24 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200902 Fri, 27 Feb 2009 11:56:13 MST Back, at last. The past year has driven me, if not to drink, then to a profound and deep-set weariness. My bones are weary. The very marrow in them, weary. The platelets in the marrow have swooned into a million chaise longues and are snapping their lax fingers for the garcons to bring pina coladas and palm frond fans. I would like, very much this: one month with the world suspended, a room devoid of anything but a vast white bed, a uniform of yoga pants and cashmere sweaters and bare feet, great steaming plates of vegetables, silence and distant bells and a dumbwaiter to bring me smoothie blog22 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200902 Mon, 23 Feb 2009 05:13:21 MST A quick email as we're sprinting out the door: tonight (Monday the 23rd, I'll be at Joseph-Beth's in Cincinnatti at 7. Tomorrow, at 7 again, I'll be at Carmichael's in Louisville. (Tuesday, the 24th) Wednesday, ditto to the 7, we'll be at Davis-Kidd in Nashville. I would do an arabesque of delight to see a good house, so come on down! I'm on email-hiatus--have about 300 to respond to (I lost all steam last week)--I will do it on Friday when I get back. Thank you! Also, these great reviews of DEB: Lauren Groff has well-trained skills. She can write a shapely sentence; reach for a blog21 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200902 Tue, 17 Feb 2009 07:00:18 MST Still, she rambles & stumbles And is again seduced. These are the (somewhat syntactically spotty) lines from the Great Gainesville Sidewalk Poet, whom I read yesterday coming and going to my new favorite place in the world: the garage apartment of my friends, Scott and Lisa. Not only do I get to spend a stunning ten minutes walking through the Duck Pond to their house, I get to walk by the GGSP's verses, which make me wonder: who is the mysterious lover "she?" The font is the loopy handwriting of a straight-A second grade girl, so I picture some lip-bitten, darkeyed teenaged waif, or a sad blog20 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200902 Thu, 12 Feb 2009 09:54:21 MST Everyone Who Lives In Gainesville And Who Reads This Blog, With the Exception of Husband and Mother-In-Law (OR: That's Right. All One Of You): Because Jami Attenberg is a friend of mine and I invited her to come to Gainesville to do a double-header reading with me tonight at Goering's at 8, and because I will be stinkin' humiliated and feel like a terrible person if we show up to the reading to find exactly two and a half other people (husband; mother in law; baby), I am pleading with you to come, please, tonight, thank you. If you do so, I can promise these things: 1) You can play wi blog19 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200902 Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:56:20 MST The magnificent Antonya Nelson puts forth another meaty entry in the age-old Novel vs. Short story debate. (borrowed from an excerpt on Andrew's Book Club) "I think people are more interested in the novel because it tends to be a more optimistic form. Again and again, I finish reading a novel and feel an uplift rather than the truncated sense of despair that stories often leave you with. ...the novel is more optimistic because it privileges a group in a society rather than an individual. A society's trajectory, in general, is to sustain itself, even if it consumes the individuals within it blog18 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200902 Mon, 09 Feb 2009 13:59:00 MST Now out of the tour-induced coma, I've been wandering around the house all day, fondling things as if unsure they really are mine. That's what living in a hotel does for you. I went upstairs to check on the baby and nearly threw a diva-fit that the bed wasn't made yet--it's nearly 2:00!--and then realized that I'm the maid in this joint. Sigh. Anyway here's the gnome-boy in action, with corresponding highlights from the trip: Six in the morning on take-off day, Beck in our driveway, framed against the neighbor's palm tree. Over the course of the next two weeks, all slightly tropical blog16 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200901 Wed, 28 Jan 2009 05:51:04 MST Last night's events were splendid: merry people filled Wild Iris, books were celebrated, DEB beautifully launched. Because I feel a bit embarrassed at launched, I had friends over for a chili/beer/cupcake dinner--and because I invited the UF MFAs, and only one came (a mix I think of workshop and shyness and the fact that I'm not Mary Gaitskill--they would've been there with bells ajangling if I were MG), we have historic levels of beer input house as of this morning. AND my friend Lula brought me a hula hoop, which I'll call the Lula hoop from now on. Now we're off! And here's my schtick th blog14 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200901 Tue, 27 Jan 2009 06:07:06 MST I'm over the moon--my collection of stories, Delicate Edible Birds, is in stores today. When you write, your books are like your children, in that you can be hopelessly proud of them, love them deeply, be sometimes embarrassed by them--but always hope they do as best in the world as they possibly can do. I worked on DEB for a very, very long time--some stories have their roots fifteen years ago--and I'm ridiculously proud of the collection. I understand the market (a little bit), though, and know that the book is handicapped by being a collection of stories--reputedly nobody reads them- blog13 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200901 Fri, 23 Jan 2009 10:25:01 MST Hou-la-la! Et chouette!: MONSTERS OF TEMPLETON has been selected by La Fnac, along with books by Rushdie and Nathan Englander, as one of the "titres incontournables de l'annee en litterature etrangere" (essential titles of 2008 in Foreign Literature), which brings special attention to MONSTERS in Fnac bookstores (69 shops in 56 cities in France). How excited am I about the tour coming up? Extremely. So much so that I'm going to repost all of the scheduled events here: --Tuesday, January 27th-----------GAINESVILLE, FL Launch party!: 6:00-7:30 PM, WILD IRIS BOOKS, 802 W. University Av blog12 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200901 Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:28:00 MST "First, you go to the alligators and you will hear the cranes. Then you follow the sound of the cranes and you will see the cranes," said my husband, somewhat mystically, giving me directions to the Sandhill migration in Payne's Prairie. And so off I set yesterday on a nine-mile run (training for a 1/2 marathon in February, as part of the "get thee from me, baby belly" campaign). I saw the moody gators in the mud of the La Chua sink; I heard the birds. It was like a thousand washboards played by a thousand drumsticks, punctuated by a thousand geese being squeezed. A half mile later, and voila, blog11 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200901 Wed, 14 Jan 2009 10:19:24 MST Peter Matthiesson said this last night at a jam-packed reading in Gainesville. I was beside myself with delight to be there: Shadow Country was astounding, one of my favorite reads of last year, and the reading was only a block away. After I read the trilogy, I felt, for the first time, at home in Florida--even HERE we could find the stuff of literature! The man behind it all was suave and gentlemanly and dapper--had he been born thirty years earlier, he would have worn a yellow silk cravat--and very good-looking, too: if any actor were to play him, living or dead, it would have to be Laurence blog10 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200901 Mon, 12 Jan 2009 12:18:53 MST Today, the brilliant and super-sweet Dave Daley has put up my story, "Fugue" on my favorite procrastination site, "Five Chapters." I love the whole idea of the Five Chapters project: to serialize a story throughout the week, thereby adding suspense and fiction to a sometimes gruel-bland workweek, and I love, love, love some of the writers who have already appeared, like Jennifer Egan and Vendela Vida and Paul LaFarge and Ellen Litman and Ross Raisin and Sam Lipsyte and Aimee Bender and Nam Le and Samantha Hunt and on and on and on. So exciting. Also, the verdict on Delicate Edible Birds fr blog9 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200901 Sun, 04 Jan 2009 14:24:03 MST It is distinctly symptomatic of my 2008 that I'm giving my New Year's wishes for 2009 four days late. Ah, well--I'm just grateful we made out out of last year alive. Here are this year's: May your 2009 be full of recovery and joy and thought and hope and quiet moments of introspection and sleep and political progress and beautiful books by the shelf-load. On New Year's Eve, we went to the beach, introduced Beckett to sand, were daunted indoors by the cold wind, then watched three movies, all of which were so forgettable that I remember none today. Then, at countdown time, we nearly sobbe blog8 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200812 Tue, 30 Dec 2008 07:33:49 MST We had two weeks on the New Jersey coast and in upstate New York, and I have learned two things. One: there is nothing sadder than an empty arcade on the Seaside Heights boardwalk in winter (blustery, bitter sea wind, broken skeeball machines, the fortunetelling mannequin whose hand mechanically clicks over the cards, but who is in the end far too weary to actually give you a fortune). And, two, it is a gift to spend a week in a house with a wonky router and cell phone coverage so poor that you actually have to climb a mountain to get it (damn you, Rum Hill). After a few days, the withdrawal f blog7 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200812 Tue, 16 Dec 2008 07:00:58 MST I'm always suspicious of end-of-the-year book lists. How can you reasonably expect a listmaker to have read every single pertinent book that could or should be on the list? What about the spectacular books by independent or university presses that are mostly suspiciously absent from those lists? And whose taste is curated in the list, anyway? So, here's my list of lists and it has nothing to do with rankings, or "best books," or yadda yadda blah blah. This is Just A Somewhat Random List of Lists. If a book doesn't make the list, the best bet is that I love it and it may have gotten so much blog6 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200812 Tue, 09 Dec 2008 19:40:09 MST Joy of joys--today, One Story has sent out "Sir Fleeting," as its latest installment. I've long been a fan of this great, gorgeous journal, and agree with their modus operandi (from the FAQ page): "We believe that short stories are best read alone. They should not be sandwiched in between a review and an expose on liposuction, or placed after another work of fiction that is so sad or funny or long that the reader is worn out by the time they turn to it. The experience of reading a story by itself is usually found only in MFA programs or writing workshops. This is a shame. Besides, there blog5 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200812 Fri, 05 Dec 2008 11:16:50 MST ...still smells like a blog, as my friend Kevin so nicely pointed out. Sigh. I am making a concerted effort to only concentrate on news items pertaining to my books, but once in a while other things insist on popping themselves in. Anyway, the Marie Claire event was lovely. We sipped surprisingly delicious drinks, courtesy of Navan, and McNally-Jackson is a glimmering, shining, happy place, run by people who clearly adore books--I felt that they were soul-mates, and will return every time I get the good fortune to go back to NYC. The Marie Claire editors were a smart, sassy bunch and I and blog4 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200812 Mon, 01 Dec 2008 10:57:44 MST Hot diggety dog! From Booklist, about Delicate Edible Birds: "The richly conceived, finely detailed stories offer portraits of smart, daring women who are in search of, in thrall to, or disillusioned by love. . . . Vivid tales from a gifted young writer who continues to surprise." Vivd, gifted and surprising are fantastic, but Joanne Wilkinson had my heart with "young." Ah. Young. Sounds good to me. Also, what does one wear to a Marie Claire party for The Monsters of Templeton? I'd dip into my enormous closet of haute couture frocks and unearth some Gucci or Narciso Rodriguez frothy flim blog3 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200811 Sat, 29 Nov 2008 09:26:31 MST Life sometimes hands you just what you need when you need it most, and yesterday I received a package containing Lewis Hyde's.The Gift This a gorgeous, thoughtful, fascinating argument about what creativity means, and why it is so important in our commercial world. This book is soul-food in a very real sense, and I'll never begrudge the desperately-needed hours of sleep I lost to it last night. I'm planning on ordering about a dozen copies and shoving this book into the hands of my talented friends. Anyway, now is the time for me to turn my attention to the next book, Delicate Edible Birds, blog2 http://www.laurengroff.com/?display=news&date=200811 Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:34:39 MST The paperback release of Monsters and the debutante's ball for Delicate Edible Birds are shaking out in a wonderful way. Things may change, but here are the dates, for now. Also in the works is the aforementioned "ball" for DEB (get it? corny, corny) in Gainesville, and a trip, I hope, to Tallahassee. New York City: On December 3rd, Voice and Marie Claire will be hosting an event at the spectacular New York bookstore McNally-Jackson, replete with goody-bags and a liquor sponsor (!), the vanilla cognac Navan. Extremely exciting. Please email me for more information. Madison, WI: On Jan blog1