This Week in Writing
Writer Michel Faber, author of The Crimson Petal and the White, has announced The Book of Strange New Things, will not only be his new but also his last novel to write and publish.
Ali Mazrui, scholar and author of The Africans: A Triple Heritage passedaway on Oct. 12th at 81 years old. Meshack Asare is the 2015 recipient of the NSK Neustadt Prize granted by World Literature Today, a magazine of the University of Oklahoma, making him the frist African to win the award for Children’s Literature.
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Local Artist Spotlight: Tom Leveen
This week, Hayden’s Ferry Review had the opportunity to talk with writer Tom Leveen, an Arizona native writing in the competitive and demanding Young Adult genre. Instead of writing fantasy fiction, which is currently popular with teenagers and fans of YA lit, he bases his work in reality and focuses on real-world problems a teenager might experience. His stories reveal the complexity of seemingly minor issues in teenagers’ lives.
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Behind the Masthead: Allegra Hyde
This week, we get the behind-the-scenes on prose editor, Allegra Hyde.
Lauren Mickey: You’re a prose editor at HFR – but what does this mean? What are your main responsibilities?
Allegra Hyde: In the words of that strabismic wonder, Jean Paul Sartre, “There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.”
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A Brief Praise for GONE GIRL and What is Next In October
Whether you enjoy them or hate them film adaptations of books this year have seen relative success. It is mostly a struggle for a fan of a novel however to see their favorite book whittled down to fit two hours. There is the worry that favorite scenes and/or characters will be omitted. Then there’s the worry that one’s carefully constructed perceptions of setting and characters will be changed or distorted by another’s vision of the novel. However there is always that curiosity that one has in seeing how the novel unfolds visually. It almost gives us a moment to feel as if the world of the story, the characters, the connections are tangible.
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The Fitter: THE DOCK: October 2014
HFR: What's the story behind the story?
HE: The story behind the story is that last year, for my birthday, I got myself a fitter. My fitter is a 1950's pinup type who works in a lingerie store on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Once I started singing her praises, I found out that there was a famous fitter on the Lower East Side: a Hasidic Jewish man, who with the help of his wife, runs a tiny one room shop, piled floor to ceiling with boxes of bras. He looks at you and names your size and she steps behind a curtain with you and literally hooks you up. I wondered what it would be like to be married to a man who made our living by staring at other women's breasts all day long. I thought, "I'd be jealous." And then I wondered what it would be like to feel I had to fit him for a new wife.
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Remembering James Foley: "The Beauties of Cooptown"
James Foley was an American journalist, video reporter, Teach for America educator, and creative writer. On August 19, 2014, James was murdered by ISIS in Syria, becoming the first American citizen to be killed by ISIS as a response to the American airstrikes in Iraq.
Here at Hayden's Ferry Review, we were shocked and saddened to hear about this tragedy. In 2001, HFR published James' story, "The Beauties of Cooptown," as part of issue 27. He shared the pages with writers such as Lydia Davis, Eamon Grennan, and George Saunders.
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Behind the Masthead: Chelsea Hickok, Managing Editor
Our inscrutable Managing Editor Chelsea Hickok has given us a look into her position at HFR and a few tidbits about herself as well. In this interview we will get a look at what it takes to assemble a body of work into a gleaming literary journal.
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A Mixed Tape for Beating Writer's Block
For most people, writer’s block can be a huge issue. Whether you’re staring at a blinking cursor while finishing a term paper, poem, or perhaps the next great American novel, I feel your pain. Unlike freaks of writing nature, like Woody Allen, who claims to never get writer’s block, I experience it all the time. Getting started is always the hardest part for me. Often, I’m not sure what I want to say, or if I even have anything to say at all.
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