 Red Room Writer Profile
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Thaisa Frank's Blog
November 22, 2009
- To my great relief, it was still here. Nestled among trees, on the corner of 10th Street in Greenwich Village. Still filled with burnished lamps, and a panoply of books that chattered to themselves. I'd been here many times, but this time it was in the middle of an exhausting tour, where it's easy to forget that most books involve an invisible meeting between a writer and a reader. Three Lives is ...
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November 7, 2009
- here's a refreshing article about the work habits of published writers--all different(these are novelists, so a lot of them do research; but the various work styles apply to poets and writers of shorter fiction) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703740004574513463106012106.html
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October 24, 2009
- In relation to the blog below, see the review of MEMORIES OF THE FUTURE in the NYTimes this Sunday. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/books/review/Schillinger-t.html?_r=1&ref=review Another writer who blurred the lines between sleeping and waking, nightmare and reality.Deep down, this kind of writing, raises a profound human question: What is it to be fully awake? and What is it to dream? ...
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October 24, 2009
- Flash fiction, or the short short story, has always had an intimate relationship with surrealism, and literature of the absurd. It is a short, urgent letter that can convey urgent messages, partly through omission. That these slightly tilted, less conventional forms of fiction are returning is evidenced by James Wood's article in The New Yorker about short-short story writer and prose poet, ...
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October 20, 2009
- HEIDEGGER'S GLASSES, the first book to be published by Phoenix, in it's new direction as a serious literary press, is coming out this May. The Editor-in-Chief has been consulting me about the cover, and I just got this write-up for an advance promotion on Amazon. (There's one there now for the Audio, but the Editor-in-Chief thought it was too purple.) Heidegger’s Glasses opens during the end ...
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October 19, 2009
- Daniil Kharms was an absurdist writer whose prose poems and longer pieces were criticisms of the Stalinist regime. He died in a mental hospital. Most recently, there has been a revival of an interest in Kharms. And he's been translated again--brilliantly--by Malvei Yankelevich. I'll be appearing with Malvei Ynkelevich this Thursday. Yankelevich will be reading from his translations. ...
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October 17, 2009
- Diary Cows by Ronald Koertge Got up early, waited for the farmer He hooked us all to the machines as usual. Typical trip to the pasture, typical day grazing and ruminating. About 5:00 back to the machines. What relief! Listened to the radio during dinner. Lights out at 7:00. More tomorrow. (many many thanks and deep bows to Ron Koertge for letting me use this.) ...
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October 12, 2009
- To web-presence. Or not. To read in bookstores. Or not. To contact every one you know. Or not.If you haven't seen this spoof on book promotion, read it! http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2009/10/19/091019sh_shouts_weiner
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October 10, 2009
- It’s a fact universally accepted among men and women, that whoever lives to be at least a hundred years old has a formula for longevity. It’s also a fact, universally accepted among men, women, and even children, that whoever migrates from being a mere writer to being published becomes an author and has a formula for success. If you look at some of the formulas for ...
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October 4, 2009
- How is surrealism different from magic realism? Fantasy? Speculative Fiction? How does the prose poem fit in? Except for prose poems, all other fiction, from romance novels and science fiction to highly literary fiction, must audition and cast characters from the land in which they live. Reluctantly--or perhaps eagerly--they always show up. And often they do very good ...
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October 3, 2009
- Some forms, which have been put aside, are coming back into vogue. This doesn’t surprise me, because such forms always break established literary molds (often using narrative and side-stepping the label of “post-modern”) They are paradoxically intriguing and entertaining, while waking the reader up from conventional dreams, often perpetuated by narrative literature where whatever ...
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September 30, 2009
- Starting on Sunday afternoons in October, I am giving a 5-session workshop in assembling a collection of short fiction. It's limited to 6 people, and I have 3 spaces open for people living in the Bay Area. The short story is coming back into vogue, and assembling collections (I've published three) is an art in itself. The workshop is helpful to writers who are experienced, have at least ten ...
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September 27, 2009
- As a contrast and challenge to some of the more staid interviews and reviews (although we all want them!), there are some online sites that take riskier perspectives--about the publishing world, about books that are worth reading, and about books that aren't. They're interested in books published by huge publishing houses, as well as others, in genre novels, as well as literary fiction. ...
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September 23, 2009
- I'm the fiction editor of a zine called AbleMuse--at least until my book comes out and I have to spend time on promotion. I'm looking for particularly original work in shorter forms--prose poems, flash fiction, and short stories. You can send things directly to me at thaisa@thaisafrank.com. If you want to know what a prose poem or flash fiction is, take a look at my blog called Fictional ...
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September 16, 2009
- I just climbed out of the The Slough of Not Writing—a place of confusion, boredom, and stoic self-reliance. During this time all kinds of projects were cached in my computer--a disorganized filing system that invariably shocks techno-people. And there were a lot floating around since I work from fragments that seem unviable, until--like shells releasing flowers underwater--something brings ...
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