Patty Somlo

“You ain’t allowed to have no emergency,” he said. “See, poor folks, they always got emergencies. No money. No job. Too much drinkin’ and drugs. We is an emergency. They tired of that. They say, you mess up, you deal with it.“

If you want to read more from the short story "Emergency Room" by Patty Somlo, visit Guernica.

Patty Somlo is a short story writer and former journalist. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and was a finalist in the Tom Howard Short Story Contest. Her work has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, The Baltimore Sun, The Honolulu Star Bulletin, The Santa Clara Review, The Sand Hill Review, Fringe Magazine, and Common Boundary: Stories of Immigration (Editions Bibliotekos 2010), and is forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review (October 2010) and several anthologies. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Megan Kelso

Artichoke Tales is a coming-of-age story about a young girl named Brigitte whose family is caught between the two warring sides of a civil war, a graphic novel that takes place in a world that echoes our own, but whose people have artichoke leaves instead of hair. Influenced in equal parts by Little House on the Prairie, The Thorn Birds, Dharma Bums, and Cold Mountain, Kelso weaves a moving story about family amidst war. (taken from Fantagraphics Books)

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James Joyce and Ulysses

A weekly podcast taking you through the novel, 3-5 minutes at a time, courtesy of author and former BBC broadcaster Frank Delaney.

The New York Review of Books

This site has gotten a nifty redesign, one more reason to visit the electronic complement to the magazine, home to great writers and writing since 1963.

Who is Laura van den Berg?

Laura van den Berg was raised in Florida and earned her MFA at Emerson College. Her fiction has appeared in One Story, Boston Review, American Short Fiction, Conjunctions, Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008, Best New American Voices 2010, and The Pushcart Prize XXIV, among others. She is also the recipient of scholarships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers' Conferences, the 2009 Julia Peterkin Award, and the 2009-2010 Emerging Writer Lectureship at Gettysburg College. Laura’s first collection of stories, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, published by Dzanc Books in October, was a 2009 Holiday selection for the Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” Program, a finalist for ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year award, and long-listed for The Story Prize.

Poetry Meets Art: Weaving In & Out

	Featured Poets: Ama Codjoe, Joel Dias-Porter, Hallie S. Hobson
July 30, 2010, 7 p.m. Tapestry, 245 W 124th Street, New York, NY
Free & open to the public.

Teresa Milbrodt

I don’t understand these men we choose, how they can be so sweet about one thing, the thing that is most painful, but they’re bastards about everything else.

If you want to read more from the short story "Ears" by Teresa Milbrodt, visit Guernica.

Teresa Milbrodt received her MFA in Creative Writing from Bowling Green State University. Her stories have appeared in Nimrod, North American Review,Crazyhorse, The Cream City Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, New Orleans Review, Natural Bridge, and Indiana Review, among other literary magazines. Her work has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Western State College of Colorado.

Listen To The Echoes

The Ray Bradbury Interviews

by Sam Weller

A definitive collection of interviews with one of America's most famous writers, covering his life, faith, friends, politics, and visions of the future

Excerpt from "Now and Forever" by Ray Bradbury

SOMEWHERE

Some stories-be they short stories, novellas, or novels-you may realize, are written as a result of a single, immediate, clear impulse. Others ricochet off various events over a lifetime and come together much later to make a whole. When I was six years old my father, who had an urge to travel, took our family by train to Tucson, Arizona, for a year, where we lived in a burgeoning environment; for me, it was exhilarating. The town was very small and it was still growing. There's nothing more exciting than to be part of the evolution of a place. I felt a sense of freedom there and I made many wonderful friends.

A year later, we moved back to Waukegan, Illinois, where I had been born and spent the fi rst years of my life. But we returned to Tucson when I was twelve, and this time I experienced an even greater sense of exhilaration because we lived out on the edge of town and I walked to school every day, through the desert, past all the fantastic varieties of cacti, encountering lizards, spiders and, on occasion, snakes, on my way to seventh grade; that was the year I began to write.

Then, much later, when I lived in Ireland for almost a year, writing the screenplay of Moby Dick for John Huston, I encountered the works of Stephen Leacock, the Canadian humorist. Among them was a charming little book titled Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town.

I was so taken with the book that I tried to get MGM to make a motion picture of it. I typed up a few preliminary pages to show the studio how I envisioned the book as a film. When MGM's interest failed, I was left with the beginning of a screenplay that had the feeling of a small town. But at the same time I couldn't help but remember the Tucson I had known and loved when I was six and when I was twelve, and began to write my own screenplay and short story about a town somewhere in the desert.

During those same years I kept encountering Katharine Hepburn, either in person or on the screen, and I was terribly attracted by the fact that she remained so youthful in appearance through the years.

Sometime in 1956, when she was in her late forties, she made the film Summertime. This caused me somehow to put her at the center of a story for which I had no title yet, but Somewhere a Band Is Playing was obviously evolving. Some thirty years ago I saw a film called The Wind and the Lion, starring Sean Connery and with a fabulous score by Jerry Goldsmith. I was so taken with the score that I sat down, played it, and wrote a long poem based on the enchanting music. This became another element of Somewhere a Band Is Playing as I progressed through the beginnings of a story which I had not yet fully comprehended, but it seemed as if fi nally all the elements were coming together: the year I spent in Tucson, age six, the year I spent there when I was twelve, the various encounters with Katharine Hepburn, including her magical appearance in Summertime, and my long poem based on the score of The Wind and the Lion. All of these ran together and inspired me to begin a long prologue to the novella that ultimately followed.

Today, looking back, I realize how fortunate I am to have collected such elements, to have held them ready, and then put them together to make this fi nal product, Somewhere a Band Is Playing. I have been fortunate to have many "helpers" along the way. One of those, in the case of this story, is my dear friend Anne Hardin, who has off ered me strong encouragement over the past few years to see this novella published. For that she shares in the dedication of this work.

Of course, I had hoped to finish the novella, over the years, in order to have it ready in time for Katharine Hepburn, no matter how old she got, to play the lead in a theater or film adaptation. Katie waited patiently, but the years passed, she became tired, and finally left this world. I cannot help but feel she deserves the dedication I have placed on this story.

Word for Word

Visit the Bryant Park Reading Room channel on Youtube to see highlights from our Word for Word series.

Misadventure

About the Author

Born in 1917, Millard Kaufman plunged into World War II on Guadalcanal as a member of the U.S. Marine Corps, then made D-Day landings on Guam and Okinawa. He co-created the beloved Mr. Magoo and was twice nominated for screenwriting Oscars—in 1954 for Take the High Ground! and in 1956 for the legendary Bad Day at Black Rock. This is his final novel.

Dzanc Short Story Collection Contest

Congratulations to David Galef, winner of the 2008 Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Contest, and Luis Jaramillo, winner of the 2009 Contest. As Dzanc is currently holding a third contest for all authors wishing to submit a short story collection to Dzanc. The winning author will be published by Dzanc in late 2013, and receive a $1000 advance. Entry to the Dzanc SSC Contest will require a $20 reading fee, and a full manuscript sent via email to ssc@dzancbooks.org. The entry fee can be made either via check made out to Dzanc Books, mailed to 1334 Woodbourne St., Westland, MI 48186 or via paypal by clicking on the button on this page. The contest deadline is December 31, 2010.

Best of the Web 2010

Contributors: Chris Bachelder, Brian Baldi, Elissa Bassist, Jensen Beach, Mary Biddinger, Kyle Booten, Robert Bradley, Emily Bromfield, Rachel Bunting, Aaron Burch, Robert Olen Butler, Dan Chaon, Kim Chinquee, Myfanwy Collins, Kristiana Colón, Thomas Cooper, Lydia Copeland, Elizabeth Crane, Michael Czyzniejewski, Oliver de la Paz, Alison Doernberg, Kasandra Snow Duthie, Elizabeth Ellen, Claudia Emerson, Brian Evenson, Lucas Farrell, Sasha Fletcher, Scott Garson, Molly Gaudry, Matthew Glenwood, Amelia Gray, Mary Hamilton, Leslie Harrison, Matt Hart, Christine Hartzler, Donora Hillard, Lily Hoang, Dave Housley, Jac Jemc, Stephen Graham Jones, Sean Kilpatrick, Matthew Kirkpatrick, Stokely Klasovsky, Kendra Kopelke, Krystal Languell, Emma J. Lannie, Charles Lennox, Sara Levine, Jie Li, Sean Lovelace, Josh Maday, Ravi Mangla, Peter Markus, Meredith Martinez, James McCormick, Steven McDermott, David McLendon, Mary Miller, Kyle Minor, Ander Monson, Stefani Nellan, Amber Norwood, Frank O'Connor, Cami Park, Jennifer Pieroni, Julie Platt, Michelle Reale, Nanette Raymond Rivera, Dave Rowley, Joanna Ruocco, F. Daniel Rzicznek, Christine Schutt, Amy Lee Scott, Matthew Simmons, Sarah J. Sloat, Sue Standing, Leigh Stein, Angi Becker Stevens, Terese Svoboda, August Tarrier, J.A. Tyler, Pamela Uschuk, Anne Valente, William Walsh, David Welch, Brandi Wells, Eleanor Wilner, Kevin Wilson, Angela Woodward, Barbara Yien, Rachel Yoder, and Lisa Zaran.