Issue 28. September 2012
YAWP 2012 SUMMER TEEN FELLOWS
Grub Street's Summer Teen Fellowship immerses high school students in the writers' life of creative craft and publishing. During three weeks at Grub Street, the teens work with published authors on original prose and poetry, meet with literary agents and editors, take field trips to inspirational locales, and much more. The Drum recorded short fiction, essays, and poetry written by the 2012 fellows, on topics ranging from semi-serious advice on navigating adolescence, to identity, to revenge. To read more about Grub's YAWP, click here.about the authors
One City One Story: Anna Solomon's The Lobster Mafia Story
download"The Lobster Mafia Story," by Anna Solomon, is the Boston Book Festival's choice for this year's One City One Story, a project to promote reading and to create community around a shared reading experience. It's a poignant tale set in motion by a widow's dreadful secret about a long-ago murder. The story is read aloud by The Drum's editor, Henriette Lazaridis Power. Anna Solomon will appear at the Boston Book Festival on October 27 to discuss the story.To download the audio recording of "The Lobster Mafia Story," right-click on the download button beside the play button, and save the mp3 to your computer. (42:11)
Zip-Code Stories
downloadL.E. Miller's "The Sea Gives" begins with a shard of china floating in the water off Plum Island and ends with a young girl questioning her place in an older woman's life. Along the way, in a brief 500 words, Miller depicts a bond between the two women, a coming together of two different worlds, and the fragility of that relationship. The prompt for this round of Zip-Code Stories was an opening line of "She saw something at the water's edge and. . . ". Listen to hear how "The Sea Gives" concludes that sentence. (4:23)
JESSICA KEENER--Excerpt from Night Swim
downloadSet in affluent Boston surburbia in 1970, Night Swim follows the Kunitz family as tragedy breaks through the country-club lifestyle masking an array of simmering, emotional troubles. (12:52)
Interview
downloadMartin Amis joined Henriette Lazaridis Power for a conversation on September 7, 2012. Amis spoke about his novel Lionel Asbo: State of England, about why we don't like Dickens' Little Nell, why we still like Jane Austen, and other topics, including religion and writing. The Drum's Audio Editor Ethan Wolff Mann joined in the conversation while Amis took a lunch break at the Keltic Krust Bakery in West Newton, Massachusetts. (27:43)
Excerpt from The Salt God's Daughter
downloadIlie Ruby's novel The Salt God's Daughter tells the story of Ruthie and Naida, a mother and daughter bound by loss, by violence, and by family mysteries. In this excerpt, Ruthie describes a storm that sends her, her mother, and her sister into a desperate escape, even as internal storms continue to pursue this small and vulnerable family. (13:18)
