Fall 2013:
Reviews, reflections, conversations.
Journey is a book that paints the act of creation as a means to access imaginative possibilities—to gain agency and to not only choose a path, but to call that path into existence. That my son and his cousin modeled this by naming the familiar and inventing a story out of the unfamiliar details of the book felt remarkable. It felt like the book understood them as... more
"But the biggest, most consistent source was the newspaper. I basically read every surviving New York City newspaper from July 1799—May 1800. (I should add that newspapers were only 4 pages long back then!) But having those thousands of pages of competing journals, with everything from the political debates of the day to who lost their wallet on..." more
By Emily Burns Morgan
"The question of placing her story within a larger context is an important one for Bulawayo. After all, a book like this raises questions about authorial responsibility. Does an author writing for an American audience about a foreign culture have an obligation to teach?" On We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo. more
You can find out more about the book at the Propeller Books site. Here, enjoy "Two Black Swans," a piece from the collection. The story originally ran in our Spring 2011 issue. more
By Patrick McGinty
"Winton has clearly felt the need to elevate his own volume and pace amidst the radical changes wrought on Australia by the coal industry. For Winton, Eyrie is a chance to write as though both his country and his name are at stake." On Tim Winton's Eyrie. more
By Emily Burns Morgan
"In so many ways, her writing is like a soap opera: the characters are rich and beautiful and have nothing to do but scheme against each other. Wharton takes great care to describe the opulent rooms, beautiful gowns, and..." more
Crafted, designed, choreographed, performed.
Art form of the twentieth century.
Stolen licks and backstage passes.
Investigations and lived experience.
Language, pushed.
Invented worlds, invented selves.
Reports from court and field.
"But that's what I think the book is. What the reader thinks the book is may be not exactly that. That's always the case—you don't know what you've written until people start telling you what you've written." James Salter talks with Propeller's Dan DeWeese about moral concerns in Salter's work, the advantages of writing longhand, and his new novel, All That Is.
"It is the theater of his songwriting that is the most striking element—his ability to be himself and someone else simultaneously, or to displace or project himself just enough so that we feel that we are at once being sung to and overhearing him sing to someone else." By Jonathan Cushing
"My paintings are like theater props without a story, and people can wonder about what that story can be." Elizabeth Lopeman chats with Gerhard Riessbeck about his paintings of icebergs, what it means to be a ship's 'expedition painter,' and his thoughts on climate change.
