I’ve got a short essay up on the New York Times Opinionator blog. I’m proud that I can now Google “Julia Elliott demonic possession” and get at least one hit. Read the shocking true story about the time I played a demonically possessed “prostitute” for a church play (at age 12!):
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/julia-elliott/
The Booklist Reader compiled a list of books listed frequently in “best of” lists from 2014. According to them, The Wilds appeared in five significant lists (full article).
Medium wisely recommends swilling “Chamomile Gin Cocktails” “while being immersed into the sticky southern realms” of The Wilds (read full post).
Although my debut novel, The New and Improved Romie Futch, won’t appear until October 2015 (Tin House Books), an “exclusive early edition” or “Powell’s Indiespensable Exclusive” is floating around now as part of box #52–reviewed here.
Johann Thorsson kindly recommends my short story “The Wilds” on Pornokitsch. Good stuff on Helen Marshall, Kelly Link, Karin Tidbeck, and Joyce Carol Oates in “Friday Five: 5 Weird and Wonderful Short Stories by Women.”
I had a great time talking to Kyle Peterson (Jasper Magazine) and Lee Snelgrove (One Columbia) about chickens, snake bite kits, and psychedelic summers in Columbia. Listen to Art, Pop & Fizz 011 here.
What book are you most ashamed of actually having read?
“There is no shame in reading,” Lane says.
Others beg to differ. Madden mourns the hours he spent sitting through Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead; Elliott, likewise, rues the day she agreed to teach Rand’s Anthem to her dystopian-lit class, as a way of compromising with students who thought her syllabus too “left wing.”
“During the week that we discussed it in class,” she recalls, “I hid it in a secret compartment of my messenger bag, terrified that somebody would mug me, force me to empty the bag, and ridicule me when they saw that wretched book tumble out.”
Great stuff on Narwhals from R.Mac Jones: “Julia Elliott’s stories remind me of narwhals. That’s how I have come to think of them since I heard a parent describe a narwhal to a four-year-old: “A whale crossed with a unicorn.” It’s good shorthand. Narwhals are toothed whales. Whales are common on posters in school hallways, warning about the extinction of aquatic life on the planet. Unicorns are the default “U” in most animal alphabet books I come across (note: the uromastix and the uakari are both harder to draw than the unicorn and not recognized by spellcheck).”
This year the Story Prize received a record number of nominations–129 short story collections–and chose three finalists:
The Wilds made the long-list of 17 “other collections that stood out.” Read full list here.
I’m generally uncomfortable in the role of book critic, so when the New York Times Book Review asked me to review J. Robert Lennon’s collection See You in Paradise, I was happy to discover that I LOVE this book. Here’s my take on it.