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MEET WELLS TOWER
There's more than a touch of Saki in 'Leopard', a short story by Wells Tower in this week's New Yorker. Both writers seem to share an instinctive understanding of the battle lines separating children...
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THE READING WILL NOT BE TELEVISED
The Roving Editor spends rather less time in New York than in North Yorkshire, so unfortunately I missed Deb Olin Unferth's event at the MercBar this week. If her readings are as entertaining as this...
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LONDON CALLING
I've recently come across two excellent magazines offering online literary content. The Drawbridge has published work by the likes of Tobias Wolff, Siri Hustvedt, Irvine Welsh and DBC Pierre. The...
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'DON'T WORRY ABOUT ME'
Amos Oz is an another of those eminent living writers whose work I have only just sampled for the first time.'Waiting', in this week's New Yorker, is a profound and powerfully atmospheric tale. Set in...
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THE BEST STORY OF THE YEAR?
BookFox's choices for best short story collections of 2008 include a number of books that were featured on The Roving Editor. It is especially gratifying to see Glen Pourciau's Invite on the list, as...
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ONE TO WATCH IN 2009
Among a handful of literary names on the Observer's 'hotlist' for 2009 is the young New Zealander Eleanor Catton. From what I have seen of her work, the interest is entirely justified. 'The Outing' has...
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F SCOTT HOT IN HOLLYWOOD
The Roving Editor started life blogging about the links between literature and movies under the title The Word on Film. It seems appropriate to return to this relatively unexplored zone via Zoetrope...
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VENICE OR LAS VEGAS
A welcome online fiction showcase has been launched by Harper Perennial, as reported by 3:AM. Curated by Cal Morgan, Fifty-Two Stories will publish new work every week this year by both established and...
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INTRUDERS IN THE DUST
The latest New Yorker fiction offering is from a veteran of the magazine, Steven Millhauser. 'The Invasion from Outer Space' is a witty exploration of what occurs when our most deep-seated fears are...
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THE TALENTED MR ROSSET
Barney Rosset, legendary New York publisher, is the subject of Obscene, a documentary film released in the UK this week. View the trailer here, and read a New York Times feature here.Though Rosset...
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THE ESSENCE OF ADAPTATION
The Guardian Review has an excellent, thought-provoking essay by Salman Rushdie on the subject of literary adaptation. Rushdie's contention is that the aim of any such enterprise– whether it is the...
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READ WELLS TOWER
Of all the writers featured on The Roving Editor, Wells Tower is the name that attracts most visitors to the blog, thanks to a brief post back in November. This augurs well for the success of his debut...
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THE PERFORMANCE IS ABOUT TO BEGIN
I've written before in praise of Eleanor Catton's short stories. Now comes the welcome opportunity to sample her debut novel. This extract from The Rehearsalappears on the newly relaunched website of...
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MEET PATRICIA ENGEL
I first came across Patricia Engel last year when her story, 'Desaliento', won the Boston Review's annual prize for fiction. I enjoyed her unhurried storytelling and unfussy prose, and made a mental...
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AUTHOR Q&A: PATRICIA ENGEL
If you haven't heard of Patricia Engel yet, you haven't been reading The Roving Editor. She is a gifted exponent of the short story, at a time when the form is at last gaining the recognition and...
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TEA OBREHT'S FEARFUL SYMMETRY
Téa Obreht wasn't born that long ago (1985), but she is a born storyteller. Her literary launch is an auspicious one, taking place as it does in the pages of the New Yorker's recent summer fiction...
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PATRICIA ENGEL DEBUT COMING IN 2010
When she spoke to The Roving Editor back in April, Patricia Engel promised to keep us posted about two book projects she had in the works. Now comes the excellent news that her debut short story...
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WILD ROVING
Despite appearances to the contrary, the Roving Editor has not been on an extended summer break. There may have been no blogging of late (apart from via Twitter) but there's been plenty of browsing --...
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PETINA GAPPAH ON THE AGE OF INDEPENDENCE
In what has been an exceptional year for the short story, the announcement of Petina Gappah as winner of the Guardian first book award is further cause for rejoicing. Her debut collection, An Elegy for...
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LITERARY ADAPTATIONS IN THE WORKS
Aravind Adiga's debut novel, Man Booker Prize-winning The White Tiger, is one of a number of upcoming literary adaptations from British filmmakers. A long list of projects recently awarded funding was...
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ASK FOR SAM LIPSYTE
It was Donald Ray Pollock who first drew my attention to Sam Lipsyte's work in a Q&A he did for the Roving Editor back in 2008. Don praised Lipsyte's 'great and quirky' collection Venus Drive. I...
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DISCOVERING TEA OBREHT
The announcement of the New Yorker's '20 under 40' list of fiction writers worth watching has prompted a huge spike in traffic to the Roving Editor. Virtually all of the visitors are searching for one...
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'GOOD FOR NOTHING ELSE'?
Of all the questions regularly put to authors by journalists and readers, it seems to me that the most important one is why they bother in the first place.A number of years ago the French newspaper...
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'WHY I WRITE' by Donald Ray Pollock
‘I found myself, at the age of forty-five, feeling trapped and dissatisfied with a factory job that I’d held for twenty-seven years (I ended up staying thirty-two years). Don’t get me wrong, it was a...
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PATRICIA ENGEL'S 'VIDA'
You could have read it here first, but I'm delighted to see that with Michiko Kakutani's glowing review in the New York Times, Patricia Engel has well and truly arrived as an important new literary...
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