Poet finds new muse

Atlanta poet Collin Kelley was at a London gallery in 2010, taking in a retrospective of photographer Sally Mann, when he was gobsmacked by something in the Virginia-born artist’s otherworldly, black-and-white images. He saw eerie parallels to his own work ― the poetry he’d set aside years earlier to focus on writing fiction.He had a collection of poems that had been “kind of floating around” since 2008, enough for a book. He’d given it a couple of titles, combined different poems, changed the s

April 4, 2013

Lee inspires Japanese writer

Celebrated Japanese writer Banana Yoshimoto is writing a serial romance novel inspired by popular Korean actor and singer Lee Seung-gi, Lee’s local agency announced on Monday.The author, who has a large fan base in Korea for her previous works such as “Kitchen” and “Amrita,” has started writing the serial novel in six installments, featuring Lee as its protagonist. The novel will be published in Anan, a Japanese beauty and fashion magazine. The first installment will be published in its April 10

April 1, 2013

Korean novel shines in Lithuania

Korean author Ha Il-ji’s 2009 novel “The Republic of Uzupis” has been selected as one of the 12 best translated books of 2012 by Lithuania’s government-affiliated literary organization. A tale about a middle-aged man who wanders in search of an imaginary country, the novel was translated into Lithuanian by Korean translator Seo Jeon-seok with the support of Literature Translation Institute of Korea and published in Lithuania in 2012. “Filled with humor and mystique, the novel tells the story of

March 31, 2013

Designer with no boundaries

With the recent release of his book “Fashion is Passion,” veteran designer Lie Sang-bong can now add “author” to his long list of job titles ― which currently includes fashion designer, nude model and goodwill ambassador for several institutions that range from Goodwill Seoul Design Olympics, the Hangul Association, Korean Green Organization, Esmod and more. Commemorating 33 years as a fashion designer, Lie looked dapper at his press conference held at the Press Center in Seoul on Monday. Rockin

March 28, 2013

Hemon’s short stories as remarkable as his literature

Aleksandar Hemon landed in the United States two decades ago, January 1992. He was 27, a young Bosnian journalist from Sarajevo arriving on a one-month visa, arranged through a cultural exchange program sponsored by the State Department. Just after he arrived, war broke out in Yugoslavia. Hemon was stranded. In the years since, as he settled into this country and became an acclaimed writer ― one of Chicago’s finest contemporary writers and arguably its most important literary talent since Saul B

March 28, 2013

Writer covers lots of territory

Middle CBy William H. Gass (Knopf)There’s an amusing and apt anecdote about William H. Gass, whose exhausting but also exhilarating new novel, “Middle C,” has just been published.During a 1978 debate, novelist John Gardner explained how he and Gass were different by stating that “my 707 will fly and his is too encrusted with gold to get off the ground.”Gass ― who loves metaphor and surely enjoyed this one ― was quick with his reply: “There is always that danger. But what I really want is to have

March 28, 2013

Moral quandaries, lost love

The StorytellerBy Jodi Picoult (Atria/Emily Bestler Books)Jodi Picoult is a familiar name to those of us who race through the Hudson News stores at the airport just before we board a plane. We are smug in our certainty ― we know what we’re getting when we pluck one of her novels from the pile. Her prose goes down easy, and she fills her stories with characters confronted by moral quandaries and life-changing decisions.That’s certainly the case in “The Storyteller,” which opens with the narration

March 28, 2013

Kim Fowley talks trash in memoir

Kim Fowley came out of a Hollywood that doesn’t exist anymore, the Hollywood of Kenneth Anger and Ed Wood. Best known for cooking up the Runaways, he began working in the music business in the late 1950s and since then has turned up in more places than Woody Allen’s Zelig, producing for Gene Vincent, writing with Warren Zevon and introducing John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band when they played Toronto in 1969.Fowley is now 73 and reportedly has been fighting bladder cancer, so it’s no surprise

March 21, 2013

The plane truth about ‘Unsolved Crime’

The Annals of Unsolved CrimeBy Edward Jay Epstein (Melville House)There’s a saying in newspaper publishing: If it bleeds, it leads. The only thing that captures the attention of the public better than a bloody crime scene is a bloody crime scene that raises more questions than it answers.In “The Annals of Unsolved Crime,” Edward Jay Epstein looks at 35 cases that were never satisfactorily resolved. He takes as his subjects not John or Jane Doe but rather some of the most famous people to ever di

March 21, 2013

Return of an old-school Scots cop

Standing in Another Man’s GraveBy Ian Rankin (Little, Brown)Welcome back to the Lothian & Borders Police force, John Rebus.On second thought, hold on a moment. You’re actually not so welcome back after all, you crusty, IPA-quaffing, single malt-drinking, doggedly old-school investigative iconoclast. At least not to your Scottish colleagues in the Edinburgh cop shop, who don’t approve of your rule-breaking, not-familiar-with-the-Internet, consorting-with-known-criminals ways.Those bureaucratic ty

March 21, 2013

Marisa Silver’s ‘Mary Coin’ imagines the life of a photographic icon

The starting point for Marisa Silver’s new novel, “Mary Coin,” was a moment of genius that unfolded on a California roadside more than 70 years ago.Just outside the coastal valley town of Nipomo in 1936, photographer Dorothea Lange spotted a migrant farmworker family sitting in a tent off U.S. Highway 101. After a few minutes of conversation, Lange snapped six shots of a mother and her children. The sixth became the defining American photograph of the Great Depression.Silver, a writer with a sha

March 21, 2013

‘I hope to bring a smile to your face’

Author of famous novel “Please Look After Mom” Shin Kyung-sook said her new book “Moonlight Tales” came to her while on a break from writing long novels. “Walking around at night alone I looked up in the sky, and there it was, a beautiful round moon. The look of it left a strong impression, and this is how the book was created,” Shin said at a press conference at Caf Comma 2 Page on Thursday.In her new book the writer tried different approaches, moving away from long, often heavy stories she is

March 21, 2013

Former coach turns advise guru

The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive ResultsmBy Bob Knight, with Bob Hammel (Amazon Publishing / New Harvest)Behind his choleric countenance, chair-hurling antics and disturbing incidents of laying hands on people in anger, Bob Knight clearly knows something about coaching college basketball. He won more than 900 games at Army, Indiana and Texas Tech, often defeating opponents with superior athletic talent.In “The Power of Negative Thinking,” Knight an

March 14, 2013

Easy to relate to ‘Kind of Kin’

Kind of KinBy Rilla Askew (HarperCollins)I first encountered the absorbing, beautifully written work of Oklahoma native Rilla Askew in her 2007 novel, “Harpsong.” I’ve since read her three earlier books and have eagerly anticipated a new one. Whatever topic she tackles, I have faith that Askew will gently yet forcefully knead it into something unforgettable.“Kind of Kin” does not disappoint. In fact, it is so good, so cogent and poignant and dead-on perceptive, I would very much like to make it

March 14, 2013

In ‘A Wild Surmise,’ L.A. is written about in poems

Just a few months ago, Eloise Klein Healy was chosen as L.A.’s first poet laureate. Now a new anthology of Healy’s work offers ample proof, if any were needed, what an inspired choice she was.“A Wild Surmise” is a vivid record of one woman’s artistic and emotional quest, a journey that unfolds, for the most part, in the streets, gardens and homes of Los Angeles. The City of Angels appears again and again in the work of Healy, a native of El Paso who grew up in Iowa but who has made Los Angeles h

March 14, 2013

Community gathers at Last Bookstore

The staircase is narrow and creaky, with a bookshelf made from a 100-year-old harp case teetering on the precipice of collapse at the top of the landing. Overflowing with open books, pages wildly askew and dangling from uneven shelves, the bookcase looks as if it’s escaped from a vintage cartoon.Rolls of yellowed, turn-of-the-century sheet music waft through the air, unfurling from a manual typewriter suspended from the ceiling.A black-clad young woman, with a prominent pierced dimple and a phil

March 14, 2013

Japan firm prints needle-eye sized book

A book with pages the size of the eye of a needle has been printed in Japan, the publishing company said Wednesday, with each tiny page showing a microscopic flower.The 22-page micro-book, entitled “Shiki no Kusabana” (flowers of seasons), contains names and monochrome illustrations of Japanese flowers such as the cherry and the plum, it said, adding the 0.75 millimeter (0.03 inch) pages were impossible to read with the naked eye.Toppan Printing said letters just 0.01 mm wide were created using

March 14, 2013