update 8/21

Aug

• Aug 21: According to Poets & Writers, Vermont College of Fine Arts and Warren Wilson are the top two low-residency MFA programs in the country.
• Aug 12: Watch the very shy Jack Kerouac come alive when he reads from On the Road on The Steve Allen Show in 1969.
• Aug 11: WordPress blogs now have a LIKE button. Would love for you to try it out if you like a post but don’t have time to comment. Or do both–the button shows up right above the comments when you click on a post.
• Aug 3: In the 2010 Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition in the novel category, The Painting Story placed on the Short List for Finalists and Between Here and Gone placed as a Semi-Finalist: the opening paragraphs.
• Aug 1: Catching Days welcomes writer Diane Lefer to the series “How We Spend Our Days.” The next writer in the series will be announced on August 8th.

July

• July 28: Listen to the voice of William Faulkner from his 1957 classes at Virginia.
• July 28: NPR special series: You Must Read This: conversations with writers about the books they love to read and recommend.
• July 20: A short short of mine, “Mackenzie,” will appear in Gargoyle #57, out next summer.
• July 11: Check out the new page announcing the next writer in the How We Spend Our Days series, requested by a reader who wanted to be able to read work by these writers ahead of time.
• July 9: Robin Black’s If I Loved You, I  Would Tell You This is one of six collections shortlisted for the 2010 Cork City-Frank O’Connor Short Story Award with the winner to be announced in September.
• July 1: Catching Days welcomes writer Tracy Winn to the series “How We Spend Our Days.”

June

• June 22: Robin Black’s If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This and Vermont College’s Robin Oliveira’s My Name is Mary Sutter are both on Oprah’s Summer Reading List!
• June 21: Hunger Mountain Number 14, the Journeys issue, (Miciah Bay Gault, editor) will be listed as a notable “Special Issue” by the Best American Series!
• June 21: Robin Black’s story “A Country Where You Once Lived” will be listed as a distinguished story in the Best American Short Stories 2010!
• June 14: In May I changed the formatting of the blog a tiny bit, and I’ve just noticed that this has thrown the photos out of whack on a number of older posts. Please bear with me as I slowly go back through to make adjustments. Thanks!
• June 1: Catching Days welcomes writer Lucia Orth to the series “How We Spend Our Days.”

May

• May 13: Out today from Viking, Robin Oliveira‘s debut, My Name is Mary Sutter, historical fiction about a midwife at the time of the Civil War.
• May 9: Anne Lamott in Salon, “Why I Hate Mother’s Day.”
• May 9: Very cool opportunities for creative collaborations: “Art House projects are a way to create a community of artists and give anyone a chance to be part of something creative.”
• May 1: Catching Days welcomes writer Daniel Asa Rose to the series “How We Spend Our Days.”

April

• Apr. 19: Paul Harding, whose novel Tinkers won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in fiction, started his writing career at the New York State Summer Writers Workshop, where he studied with Marilynne Robinson. (I studied with Marilynne Robinson there too…)
• Apr. 4: It’s National Poetry Month. Click to receive a poem-a-day.
• Apr. 2: I am sorry to be so behind in visiting blogs and responding to comments. I had schoolwork and still not 100% and still trying to unpack. Looking forward to it soon!
• Apr. 1: Catching Days welcomes writer Robin Black to the series “How We Spend Our Days.”

March

• Mar. 30: Thank you for all the comments while I was in Italy. Looking forward to responding to each one this week!
• Mar. 30: Release Day for Robin Black’s first book: If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This!
• Mar. 14: Margaret Atwood spoke recently at Davidson College.
• Mar. 2: Wonderful new story by Elizabeth Benedict in Narrative Magazine: “If I Could Speak Chinese.”
• Mar. 2: Mari Strachan’s The Earth Hums in B Flat is a finalist for the 2010 Indies Choice Book of the Year Awards in Adult Debut.
• Mar. 1: Catching Days welcomes writer Miciah Bay Gault to the series “How We Spend Our Days.”

February

• Feb. 1: Catching Days welcomes writer Alexander Chee to the series “How We Spend Our Days.”

January

• Jan 28: 1700 Steps: my post on the Sirenland Blog.
• Jan. 23: Author and journalist Gay Talese, and Nan Talese, a publisher and editor with Knopf Doubleday, will speak at 2:30 p.m. Sunday JANUARY 24TH at the Columbus Public Library, 3000 Macon Road in COLUMBUS, GEORGIA. Books for purchase, and autographs, will be available. Admission is free. The event is sponsored by the Chattahoochee Valley Libraries and the Muscogee County Library Foundation.
• Jan. 11: Thank you to all who read my stories–”Frosting” and “The Empty Armchair.” Both made Contrary Magazine‘s Top Ten Most Read Stories in 2009!
• Jan. 1: Catching Days welcomes writer Abigail Thomas to the series “How We Spend Our Days.”

December

• Dec. 20: The perfect book trailer: Dani Shapiro on Devotion, in bookstores in February:
• Dec. 1: Catching Days welcomes writer Elizabeth Benedict to the series “How We Spend Our Days.”

November

• Nov 21: In The New Yorker this week, an amazing new story by Yiyun Li: “Alone.”
• Nov. 13: Discovered great post on quirks people (sailors, writers, artists, actors) have in the way they work: rodcorp
• Nov. 13: Discovered this cool website: Daily Routines: How writers, artists, and other interesting people organize their days.
• Nov. 1: Yes, the header photograph is now in black and white as a nod to the longer nights and wintery months. It will spring back into color on March 1.
• Nov. 1: Catching Days welcomes writer Sheri Reynolds to the series “How We Spend Our Days.”

October

• Oct. 19: Wondering what to read next? Start with this essay by Mark Bastable at Bibliobuffet, “Is This the Line for Faulkner’s Latest?“
• Oct. 16: Wonderful essay by novelist Alexander Chee in The Morning News, “Annie Dillard and the Writing Life.”
• Oct. 1: Catching Days welcomes writer Adam Braver to the series “How We Spend Our Days.”

September

• Sept. 23: My story, “The Empty Armchair,” appears in the fall issue of Contrary Magazine.
• Sept. 9: My story, “The Splitting Sound,” appears in the fall issue of Clapboard House.
• Sept. 9: Kindling Under the Covers
• Sept. 4: Catching Days celebrates its first anniversary today! Here’s that very first post.
• Sept. 1: Catching Days welcomes writer Dani Shapiro to the series “How We Spend Our Days.”

August

• Aug. 20: I’ve added some great new links! Check out the Links tab above or click links.
• Aug. 9: If you like movies and writing or blogs or cooking or Paris, you will love Julie and Julia based on the book by the same name, which was based on a blog!

July

• July 30: Check back on Saturday, August 1st, for the first post in a new monthly series, “How We Spend Our Days.” Pam Houston will be writing the first guest post.
• July 16: Check out my flash fiction story, “Watching” in Six Sentences. That’s right–six sentences. There’s a box to check after the story to show your enthusiasm for it.
• July 14: Check out my review in Contrary Magazine of Mari Strachan’s debut novel, The Earth Hums in B Flat.
• July 13: Mentioned in Salon.com:  “David Foster Wallace Lives on for an ‘Infinite Summer.’”
• July 7: Lauren Roberts, the Editor of BiblioBuffet, includes a list of Book-Related Blogs on her site. Here’s what she wrote about Catching Days:

“This delightful blog really does have a sense of ‘capturing days’ in it. Cynthia’s posts are like being with her as she moves through her life and days—from sharing what she loves about the books she is reading to the ‘aaarrg!’ feeling of opening up a new book package and finding a bent cover, from  quotes that make her ponder to a writing group week. Reading this is a bit like poking, with open invitation, into one of the small beach houses pictured on her home page. Personal, witty, and as comfortable as a pair of old jeans. A good place to hang out.”

Thanks, Lauren!

June

• June 26: New and upcoming releases: June 16 Anita Brookner’s new novel, Strangers, and on October 27th, John Irving’s new novel, Last Night in Twisted River.
• June 25: Women, be inspired! Who Does She Think She Is (thanks to Jennifer Neri)
• June 24: From Follow the Reader today: “A recent survey of lit blog readers shows that 56% buy books primarily based on the influence of blogs.” Also, from Literary License, “These results show that, for those of us reading lit blogs regularly (and there are quite a lot of us these days), those blogs are influencing us to make book-related purchases at least once a month in most cases.”
• June 19: Just discovered that USAToday.com picked up my Blogcritics review on Rachel Cusk’s books.
• June 18: In Australia, Tim Winton has won the country’s top fiction prize, the Miles Franklin Award, for the fourth time, for his novel, BREATH.
• June 15: O Magazine picks Hannah Tinti’s The Good Thief as one of the top 20 Beach reads for the summer!
• June 11: Readiac–only the books you MUST read–picked up two of my reviews–The Song of the Lark and Arlington Park. Check out this cool new site.
• June 4: Marilynne Robinson’s Home wins the UK’s Orange Prize for the best novel written by a woman. Congratulations!

May

• May 31: BookExPo America 2009: Bloggers Draw a Crowd.
• May 14: Check out my review in Blogcritics of Rachel Cusk’s life in books in anticipation of the publication on May 26th of her new memoir The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy.
  
• May 6: the Pen American Center announced that Hannah Tinti had won the Pen/Nora Magid award, which honors a magazine editor whose high literary standards and taste have, throughout his or her career, contributed significantly to the excellence of the publication he or she edits.

April

• Apr 20: Announced today at 3:00pm, Olive Kitteridge won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction!
• Apr 16: the American Booksellers Association announced  the winners of the inaugural Indies Choice Book Awards, formerly known as the Book Sense Book of the Year Awards.  The new awards reflect the spirit of independent bookstores nationwide through new categories and a broader range of winners and honor books. For example, Best Indie Buzz Book (Fiction): The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.
• Apr 2: Check out my guest blog post on revision at Kim’s Craft Blog.
• Apr 1: April is National Poetry Month!  Sign up to receive a poem a day from Knopf. This year, it’s dedicated to the memory of John Updike.  His poem, “Half Moon, Small Cloud” starts us off.

March

• Mar 27-29, in Columbus, Georgia, at the Columbus Public Library:  A Carson McCullers Film Festival.
• Mar 21: Check out my review in Contrary Magazine of Elizabeth Diamond’s debut novel, An Accidental Light.

January

• Jan 27: Bad news/good news:  Fewer people reading books.  More people reading literary fiction.
• Jan 27: Farewell, Mr. Updike:  John Updike dies of lung cancer at the age of 76.  For an amazing archive of the author’s voice, views, and reviews, check out this New York Times site.  Also the New York Times blog features other writers remembering Updike.  And for a great picture of Updike in the 60′s, today’s New York Times.
• Jan 24: the National Book Critics Circle announced the 2008 finalists for its book awards. In fiction, it’s Roberto Bolaño for 2666; Marilynne Robinson for Home; Aleksandar Hemon for The Lazarus Project; M. Glenn Taylor for The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart; Elizabeth Strout for Olive Kitteridge. The winner will be announced March 12, 2009.
• Jan 21: TransWorldNews Article 1/21/2009: Contrary Magazine devotes 2009 to Emerging Writers and Poets

December

• My story, “Frosting,” appears in Contrary’s Winter issue!
• My story, “Into the Woods,” is live in Storyglossia’s issue 32.
• The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti wins the 2008 John Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize.

November

• Borders announces the nominees for the 2008 Original Voices Awards.  For fiction: ”Dear American Airlines,” by Jonathan Miles; “The Cellist of Sarajevo,” by Steven Galloway; ”The Good Thief,” by Hannah Tinti; ”The Lace Reader,” by Brunonia Barry; ”The Somnambulist,” by Jonathan Barnes; ”The White Tiger,” by Aravind Adiga.
• The National Book Award winners are announced on November 19th.
• “Catching Days” is one of Powell’s Books “Lit Blogs We Love” !
• “Morrison Doesn’t Rest on Her Nobel Laurels,” Carlin Romano’s Powell’s Books review of Toni Morrison’s A Mercy
• Good writing from Richard Schiff, “What’s next?”
• Open letter from Alice Walker to Barack Obama

October

• Toni Morrison reads from and talks about her new book, “A Mercy”–NPR Book Tour, October 27-30, 2008
• A radio recording of Virginia Woolf talking about words–All Things Considered, October 23, 2008
• Andrew Sullivan, an Atlantic senior editor, writes about blogging in the November 2008 issue of The Atlantic–”Why I Blog.”

September

• My story, “A Kind of Frosting,” won an award at the Chattahoochee Valley Writers’ Conference.
• My story, “Into the Woods,” will appear in an upcoming issue of Storyglossia:  http://www.storyglossia.com/.
• In the September issue of Departures Magazine, a mention by Dani Shapiro in the article, “Creative Writing, Italian Style:  http://www.departures.com/login.