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INTERVIEW WITH MARIAN SZCZEPANSKI, AUTHOR OF PLAYING ST. BARBARA

Late Last Night Books

11/4/13 – INTERVIEW WITH MARIAN SZCZEPANSKI, AUTHOR OF PLAYING ST. BARBARA 

Playing St. Barbara 2Novelist Marian Szczepanski and I met at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference in the summer of 1993. We recently reconnected through a mutual Facebook friend who had just reviewed Marian’s new (and first!) novel, Playing St. Barbara. Marian was gracious enough to catch me up on the missing twenty years, including how she came to write this historical novel chronicling the brutal lives and enduring spirit of Depression-era immigrant coal-mining families in southwestern Pennsylvania.

INTERVIEW WITH LITERARY TRANSLATOR LINDA MARIANIELLO

Late Last Night Books

 10/4/13 — INTERVIEW WITH LINDA MARIANIELLO, LITERARY TRANSLATOR 73627_100398236696948_340397_n

Life takes us funny places. Decades ago I played in the Yale Symphony Orchestra with Linda Marianiello, who had transferred to Yale and had the reputation – more than well-deserved – as a phenomenal flautist. I recently learned that Linda has turned her musical training, liberal arts education, and other considerable skills to literary and book translation, a field that constitutes 3% of all book publishing in the US today. I grabbed the chance to catch up with Linda to find out not only how her life took this turn but also learn something about what exactly literary translation requires of a writer.

DISCUSSABILITY: THE KEY TO GOOD BOOK CLUB BOOKS

Late Last Night Books

9/4/13 – DISCUSSABILITY: THE KEY TO A GOOD BOOK CLUB BOOK

Book clubs are often maligned as places where people do just about everything except discuss books. But when I asked members of my own book club for reading recommendations, they confirmed what I had always suspected: book clubs not only discuss books, but “discussability” trumps literary merit.

THE BOOKS I MISSED READING LAST YEAR

Late Last Night Books

9/1/13 – THE BOOKS I MISSED READING LAST YEAR

I’ve been so submerged in the process of writing a new novel that I’ve missed pretty much every one of my monthly book club meetings over the past year—and, alas, many of the books that went with them. When I finally came up for air, I found myself gasping for fresh reading material, and I figured the ladies of my longstanding book club could rescue me.