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Bradford Morrow: Not Afraid of the Dark
Otto Penzler needs a golf mystery for a series of books about sports. Bradford Morrow writes one about miniature golf, with its “crazy little world of windmills and castles,” and a lonely boy who, as a teenager, goes to work at a miniature golf course.
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Christopher Goffard: Death in Kenya
Christopher Goffard’s dive into a true story of murder, madness, and Kenyan politics began four years ago when he stumbled across a wire service brief buried in the Los Angeles Times, where he is a staff writer.
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Grace Burrowes: The Gravity That Keeps Families Together
Romance authors might be expected to exude sensuality, while lawyers are no-nonsense and tough. Grace Burrowes is both, but even amid the bustle and noise of the annual Romance Writers of America conference, she’s a model of mellowness and... well, grace.
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Maria Duenas: Politics, Espionage, Fashion... and Love
María Dueñas, 47, never intended to write a bestselling novel. She never even dreamed of becoming a fiction writer. A professor for almost 20 years, with a Ph.D. in English philology, Dueñas says she was perfectly happy teaching at the University of Murcia in Spain. But she also says she felt it was time for something new.
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Thomas Steinbeck: The Last Steinbeck
On the patio of a restaurant in Malibu, Thomas Steinbeck, Nobel laureate John Steinbeck’s eldest son, is in his favored environment, along the California coastline, which, like his father, he has gravitated to for many years.
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Joan Didion: Stepping into the River Styx, Again
“This was a much harder book to write than The Year of Magical Thinking,” says Joan Didion about Blue Nights. “With Magical Thinking, there was no place to go except where it went.”
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Archer Mayor Writes Vermont Through a Cop's Eyes
"It’s approximately 12:25. And I swear to the accuracy of all I’m about to say," Archer Mayor says into my tape recorder, but this is no interrogation. All the crimes we’ll be discussing were committed on paper. Tag Man (Minotaur), Mayor’s latest Gunther novel, is about a burglar who steals quiet time in the homes of sleeping or absent victims; a drifter who may be butchering and then photographing young women; and a prep school student caught in her family’s criminal dysfunction.
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William Kennedy: Out on His Town
William Kennedy, at 83, is about to publish his long-awaited new Albany novel, Changó’s Beads and Two-Tone Shoes (Viking), the eighth book in his celebrated cycle that has famously tracked the lives of ballplayers, bums, politicians, playwrights, prostitutes, gamblers, gangsters, bowlers, and more, all seeking to understand what it means to survive in the capital city they have no choice but to call home.
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Dan Sinker: Chicago, May I Present: Your Next F***ing Mayor
From roughly the end of September 2010 to the following February, an anonymous Chicago writer used a fake Twitter account to parody Rahm Emanuel’s campaign for mayor of Chicago.
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S.J. Rozan: Chinatown, My Chinatown
Even S.J. Rozan can’t really pinpoint when her fascination with Chinese culture began, but by the time she was 15 and considering college, the availability of courses in Asian culture, particularly Chinese, attracted her to Oberlin in Ohio.
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Frank Miller: Comics and Patriotism
Superstar comics artist Frank Miller is back with a new publishing house, Legendary Comics, and a new graphic novel, Holy Terror, conceived as a response to the 9/11 attacks.
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Jamil Ahmad: Treasure Chest
Jamil Ahmad, born in 1931 in Punjab, had never heard that Vladimir Nabokov was twice caught on his way to the incinerator with the manuscript of Lolita. Both times, his wife, Vera, intercepted him. With a deeper understanding of this anecdote than most, Ahmad laughs on the phone from Islamabad.
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Tom Perrotta: Disappearing Act
Tom Perrotta rules suburbia. It’s been the backdrop for all of his books, including his new novel, The Leftovers (St. Martin’s) even while he explains that he never made a decision to write about it.
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Paul Starr: Taking on Health Care Reform
Paul Starr, 61, a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, American Prospect magazine cofounder and Princeton sociology professor, is firmly rooted in a past infused with the lessons from his pediatrician father, who ran his busy office from the family’s Midwood, Brooklyn, home.
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Gender Envy: Anne Enright
Anne Enright is the author of eight works of fiction, most recently [attach review] (Norton), and The Gathering, which won the prestigious Man Booker Prize in 2007. And just the morning PW talks to her, she finished a screenplay. When asked if it's an adaptation of one of her novels, she smiles wryly. "No, no. Nothing happens in my books."
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The Year of Michael Connelly
It's shaping up to be an epic year for novelist Michael Connelly. First a movie version of The Lincoln Lawyer, his first legal thriller to feature Mickey Haller, was released. Then his fourth Haller novel, The Fifth Witness, zoomed to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, and soon Connelly's 24th novel will be published.
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Binyavanga Wainaina: Talking About Writing About Africa
In his essay "How to Write about Africa," published in Granta in 2005, Binyavanga Wainaina, 40, offers satirical advice to Westerners writing about Africa. In doing so, he points out the clichés and simplifications of much of Western media's coverage of the continent.
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David Whitehouse: Good in Bed
David Whitehouse lounged on a sumptuous, oversized bed outdoors at the Southbank Centre in London on June 5 to launch his first novel, [attach review] (Scribner) in an all-day stunt that drew hundreds of people curious to meet the 30-year-old former journalist whose book had been published in the U.K. two days earlier.
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First Fiction 2011: Frank Bill: Great Writing Is No Crime
The gritty, vivid stories in Crimes in Southern Indiana (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) have the ring of authenticity. Author and 37-year-old Corydon, Ind., resident Frank Bill, represented by Stacia Decker at Donald Maass Literary Agency, says, "Everything I write about comes from a real place.
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First Fiction 2011: Alexander Maksik: Double Debut
Not only is You Deserve Nothing the debut of writer Alexander Maksik, but the title also marks the debut of the new Tonga Books imprint at Europa Editions. Bestselling novelist Alice Sebold acquired and edited You Deserve Nothing—along with four other titles for the nascent imprint.
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