Topic of the Week: Transitions August 31, 2009
Posted by Carolyn Burns Bass in transitions, weekly topics.add a comment
September is a transitional month. The seasons begin changing as autumn falls upon some parts of the globe and spring blossoms in others. Schools reopen, students and teachers return to classrooms and parents resume the back-to-school routine. This week in #litchat we’ll discuss transitions with open chat all week long.
Topic of the Week: Sci-Fi/Fantasy & a Child’s Imagination August 24, 2009
Posted by Carolyn Burns Bass in children's literature, fantasy, science fiction, weekly topics.1 comment so far
Topic of the Week for August 24-28: Sci-Fi/Fantasy and a Child’s Imagination
Fiction is one of the most powerful and influential means of teaching children about the world they will one day inherit. Imagination plays a big role in the development of a child’s world view and is stimulated by otherworldly stories in science fiction and fantasy. The alternative worlds created by authors such as C.S. Lewis, J.K. Rowling, and Madeline L’Engle do more than just entertain children with hours of passive activity, they teach about racism, hatred, exploration, and overcoming the feelings of being different.
R.J. Anderson
During the week of August 24-28 in LitChat we’ll talk about the power of a child’s imagination with an emphasis on science fiction and fantasy. Joining us as guest hosts on Friday, August 28, are R.J. Anderson, author of the YA fantasy series Faery Rebels: Spell Hunters, and K.A. Holt, author of middle grade science fiction, Mike Stellar: Nerves of Steel
A lover of fairy tales, mythology and fantasy stories from an early age, R.J. Anderson (known to friends and family as Rebecca) started writing original fiction at the age of eight and completed her first novel-length manuscript at nineteen. Unfortunately the book was awful and after several rejections it became clear that publishers wanted nothing to do with it, so she had to relinquish her dream of becoming a child prodigy.
Fortunately, Rebecca had more success with her second attempt — the story of a fierce young faery who fights to save her dying people while concealing her forbidden friendship with a human — which was published earlier this year as KNIFE in the UK and FAERY REBELS: SPELL HUNTER in North America.”
Rebecca now reads to her own three sons the stories that fired her imagination as a young person, and enjoys reading wonderful new middle grade and teen novels and discussing them with others. She is proud to be a member of the Debut 2009 MG/YA Writers’ Group on LiveJournal (www.feastofawesome.com).
Follow R.J. Anderson on Twitter at: @RJAnderson.
K.A. Holt
K. A. Holt lives a life of mayhem in Austin, Texas, with her husband and three children. When she’s not writing action-packed adventures for middle grade readers, her alter ego, Kari Anne Roy, is writing action-packed tales of suburban shenanigans for not-yet middle-aged readers.
As Kari Anne Roy, she is author of Haiku Mama (because seventeen syllables is all you have time to read) (Quirk, 2006). Some of her other work has appeared in Parents Magazine, and on the McSweeney’s Internet Tendency website.
You can find out all about K.A. Holt at http://www.kaholt.com, and you can learn more about Kari Anne Roy at http://www.haikuoftheday.com.
Mike Stellar: Nerves of Steel is K.A. Holt’s first book for children.
Follow K.A. Holt on Twitter at: @karianneroy.
Topic of the Week: How Culture Informs and Directs Storytelling August 16, 2009
Posted by Carolyn Burns Bass in fiction, literary fiction, multi-cultural fiction, weekly topics.Tags: Eugenia Kim, Korea, literary fiction, multi-cultural fiction, writers
3 comments
Eugenia Kim
Some of the most powerful novels of our age have been steeped in cultures other than our own. Amy Tan, Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison, and Gabriel García Márquez are among the most well-known authors whose books have distinctive ethnic settings. While the cultural flavor of these authors and the hundreds of other authors writing multicultural fiction, the thread that runs through them all is great storytelling. This week in LitChat we’ll talk about the ways that culture informs and directs storytelling.
Our guest host on Friday, August 21st, is Eugenia Kim, whose debut novel The Calligrapher’s Daughter, launches August 18th. Kim is the daughter of Korean immigrant parents who came to America shortly after the Pacific War. She has published short stories and essays in journals and anthologies, including Echoes Upon Echoes: New Korean American Writings, and is an MFA graduate of Bennington College. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and son.
“In The Calligrapher’s Daughter Eugenia Kim beautifully chronicles both the lost world of a traditional Korea and the lost childhood of her remarkable heroine. A coming-of-age story that resonates with larger significance, the novel movingly depicts the emotional cost of transformation and the love and sacrifice that make transformation possible. The Calligrapher’s Daughter is at once the story of a single life as well as the changing life of a nation and, while the details are fascinatingly exotic, the narrative rings with the hard won truths of profound human experience. It is a note-worthy debut from a writer with great heart and real empathy.”—Sheridan Hay, author of The Secret of Lost Things
Follow Eugenia Kim on Twitter at @Eugenia_Kim
Topic of the Week: Wordplay and Creative Literary License August 10, 2009
Posted by Carolyn Burns Bass in Uncategorized.add a comment
Books are made of printed words. Printed words arranged in a specific order make stories. Stories can be dull or they can be engaging. If you enjoy books and stories, it’s likely that you enjoy good wordplay. Good writing is more than just coherent arrangments of words–it’s stringing picturesque phrases and evocative expressions into prose that leaps from the page and into the reader’s imagination. This week in LitChat we’re all about wordplay.
Joining us as guest host on Friday is Jag Bhalla, author of I’m Not Hanging Noodles On Your Ears and Other Intriguing Idioms from Around the World (National Geographic Books). Hanging Noodles is a creative compendium of idioms from cultures all over the globe. Bhalla opens each section with research notes and personal remarks, then lists examples of idioms and the language from which they’re drawn. As idioms go, much of their cleverness is lost in the transliteration from the original language into English, but they still manage to be chuckle-worthy variations on a theme.
In Moscow, “I’m not hanging noodles on your ears” is common parlance, but unless you’re Russian your reaction is probably, “Say what?” The same idea in English is equally odd: “I’m not pulling your leg.” Both mean: Believe me.
As Bhalla demonstrates, these amusing, often hilarious phrases provide a unique perspective on how different cultures perceive and describe the world. Organized by theme—food, love, romance, and many more—they embody cultural traditions and attitudes, capture linguistic nuance, and shed fascinating light on “the whole ball of wax.” For example, when English-speakers are hard at work, we’re “nose to the grindstone,” but industrious Chinese toil “with liver and brains spilled on the ground” and busy Indians have “no time to die.”
Bhalla is an amateur idiomologist, amateur triviologist, amateur natural scientist, amateur entrepreneur, and amateur film producer. He calls himself an amateur author, but one who publishes a book through National Geographic Books can hardly be called an amateur. Witty and refreshing, with charming illustrations by New Yorker cartoonist Julia Suits, I’m not hanging noodles on your ears when I say this is a must-read for any lover of language.
Follow Bhalla on Twitter at @hangingnoodles.
Topic of the Week: Novelography, or Thinly Veiled Memoir August 3, 2009
Posted by Carolyn Burns Bass in fiction, novelography, women's fiction.add a comment
Karen Weinreb
Last week’s LitChat topic was The Fine Line Between Fact and Fiction, a discussion of narrative and creative non-fiction in personal essay and memoir. We’re taking the conversation to the opposite pole this week with discussion about novels written specifically to mirror an author’s real life experience. For lack of a better word, we’ll call this autobiographical style of fiction novelography. (Adopting the term “novelography” from a Twitter post last week.)
When Karen Weinreb‘s financier husband was arrested, prosecuted and jailed for bilking millions of dollars from investors, Weinreb’s life went from society storybook to scandalous single title. Armed with two degrees in literature and a background in journalism, Weinreb pulled herself and her family through financial ruin and social ostracization.
Weinreb’s fiction debut, The Summer Kitchen (July, St. Martin’s Press), is a result of her efforts. Set in the Wall Street bedroom community of Bedford, New York, the novel portrays a family much like Weinreb’s involved in a financial scandal mirroring her husband’s. Weinreb’s stunning diorama of the country club set and private school progeny is a smart novel of manners and personal transcendence, rather than a snarky rant against those who snubbed her.
Join us Monday and Wednesday at 4 p/et for LitChat open discussion of Novelography: the Thinly Veiled Memoir, then again on Friday at the same time when Weinreb joins us to discuss her novel and the process of writing a novelography.
Follow Weinreb on Twitter at @KarenWeinreb.
