John Vercher’s debut, Three-Fifths, is a riveting crime story told with touches of poetry, razor-sharp characterizations, and the sort of cinematic pacing that keeps you on the edge of your seat. It’s also a powerful narrative about family, friendship, and…
Steph Cha’s latest, Your House Will Pay, is explosive and brilliant. The novel’s core is set in LA in the wake of Rodney King and is a fictionalized rendering of the 1991 Latasha Harlins murder. Teenage Latasha, or Ava in…
We all know that unrepentantly evil characters are the most fun to write. But how do you make a psychopath memorable, and more than just the tired one-dimensional shock value trope of airport novels? Make them a literary psychopath: a…
This fall, PBS is running a program called “The Great American Read.” Earlier this year, they asked 7,000 readers to name their favorite works of fiction. The alphabetical list of 100 (not ranked) was then culled by a panel of…
In real life, I am generally good with time. I meet deadlines. I show up Canadian punctual (ten minutes early) to events. And I am usually aware of the date and time thanks to that job I have at MIT,…
It is a truth universally acknowledged that one when becomes a writer paid (minimally, but paid!) for writing, one chucks all of one’s precious notions about craft and art and motivation out the window that has needed replacing for three…