ROCK AND ROLL AND WRITE

Music and book blog Largehearted Boy asks Sam Lipsyte to talk about the music he listened to while writing The Ask.  His answers are alternately obscure and wonderful, and range from experimental deconstructionists Suicide to hip-hop giant KRS-One to rock ‘n’ roll saviors The Hold Steady.  (Fun Fact: Lipsyte is a fan of cover songs).

KEVIN CANTY TALKS WITH MONTANA PUBLIC RADIO

Speaking with Montana Public Radio, SLS Montreal faculty member Kevin Canty says of writing that “as soon as you know what you’re doing, it’s dead; the energy’s not there.”  Hear him talk about his writing process and read the titular story from his new collection Where the Money Went at MTPR’s The Write Question blog, or read an excerpt from the collection at Random House.

Matvei Yankelevich Interview

Good friend of SLS, and former SLS Russia adjunct faculty member Matvei Yankelevich pops up in an engaging interview on Largehearted Boy.  The founder of Ugly Duckling Presse, Kharms scholar, and talented poet and translator is intriguing as always. Read the interview here.

LIPSYTE CONTINUES TO DOMINATE THE INTERNET

The Washington Post and The Huffington Post are both in love with Sam Lipsyte’s The Ask.  In Washington, Lipsyte’s “rants become arias” and Huffington calls him “the poet laureate of overeducated American loserdom.”  If you haven’t yet read Five Chapters’ excerpt of The Ask, make sure you do; or, if you’d rather have Sam himself read it to you, make your way to Harper’s YouTube, to see him reading “Love: A Rebuke,” from the novel.

POPMATTERS REVIEWS RASSKAZY

Any review in which the book one edited is mentioned in the same breath with the works of  Chekhov, Turgenev, and Solzhenitsyn, should be considered a highly positive one. And it is indeed a positive one.

WALK THROUGH QUEENS WITH SAM LIPSYTE

SLS Montreal special guest (and two-time SLS St. Petersburg faculty) Sam Lipsyte’s new novel, The Ask, is pulling strong reviews.  The novel takes place in Astoria, Queens, where Lipsyte lived for many years.  Read as he takes Flavorwire reporter Emily Temple on a walking tour of some of the novel’s locations.  Lipsyte and fellow SLS Montreal guest Robert Coover are both featured in the new issue of Gigantic.

THE YOUNG WRITE DIFFERENTLY IN THE NEW EUROPE AND IN RUSSIA

Antanas Sileika (SLS-Lithuania), in an extended online conversation with Kathryn Kuitenbrower, makes some incisive points with regards to the differences between the work done by the new generations of writers emerging in Eastern/Central Europe and in Russia, as exemplified by two recently released anthologies: Best European Fiction 2010, edited by Aleksandar Hemon, and Rasskazy, edited by Jeff Parker and Yours-Truly.

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN ON BEING PAVEMENT

SLS Montreal faculty member Chuck Klosterman interviews Stephen Malkmus of reunited indie rockers Pavement; much pontificating on what it means to be an ironic legend ensues.