Author Archives: SJW

AWP Conference 2013

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Stewart will be at the following AWP Conference events this weekend.

Thursday, 3/7, 3:00 p.m. to 4:15 p.m.

Room 103,
Plaza Level		 R218. Does Place Still Matter? The Relevance of Regional Fiction in the 21st Century. (Brett Boham, Stewart O’Nan, Susan Straight, Alex Espinoza, Michael Jaime-Becerra) Attempts to categorize American literature often begin and end with region. Southern fiction. New England poetry. Midwestern novel. But to what extent is regionalism a useful lens through which to understand contemporary American literature? How do so-called regional writers conceptualize place? And has the expansion of the American counterculture and social media forever changed the landscape of regional fiction? Panelists will discuss the advantages and limitations of thinking regionally.

Saturday, 3/9, 10:30 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.

Room 306,
Level 3		 S150. If These Walls Could Talk… Oh Wait, They Do!(Eleanor Henderson, Stewart O’Nan, Tea Obreht) The whole world is a stage, but as fiction writers we get to choose where and when to set a story. That decision can influence everything else in the novel, for better or worse. Four novelists talk about the pressures that settings, both urban and rural, can place on our fiction, and how and why to make choices about landscape.

Writers in Paradise 2013

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Stewart will be at Writers in Paradise (January 19-27, 2013).  Here’s the schedule:

Short Story I and II

These workshops will focus on the art of the short story, including complex characterization, apt language (diction, mood, tone, and imagery), appropriate and accurately rendered setting, structural integrity, thematic complexity, and point-of-view appropriate to the characters and the action.

Faculty: Andre Dubus III (I), Stewart O’Nan (II)

Writers’ Conference Evening Reading Series

Thursday, January 24
Stewart O’Nan and David Yoo

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More Best of 2012 for The Odds

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More Best of 2012 for The Odds!

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The piercingly perceptive author of “Last Night at the Lobster” and “Emily, Alone” starts this gemlike stunner in Cleveland, where middle-class Art and Marion Fowler stuff $8,000 in a gym bag, flee their foreclosing suburban home and take a bus to Niagara Falls, Canada. Art hopes for a gambling score and rekindled romance on the $249 “Valentine’s Getaway Special”; Marion wants out. This brief, of-our-times story is full of surprise. O’Nan, a Pittsburgh resident, may well be the best Midwestern novelist going.

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There is a unique pleasure in reading a writer who has been on your list for some time but has evaded capture. For me, that writer was Stewart O’Nan. I had caught references to the wonders of his writing for years and received suggestions to read this or that. But it wasn’t until I picked up his 2012 novel “The Odds” that I understood what friends and critics had been talking about.

“The Odds” is subtitled “A Love Story,” but it is the tale of a love that has gone through the wringer of betrayal and disappointment amid the financial squeeze of an economy that has driven more than a few couples into a ditch. Art and Marion Fowler’s marriage is on the brink of collapse; they’ve lost their jobs and now they’re threatened with the loss of their home. So they decide to return to Niagara Falls to revisit the tourist spot where they honeymooned. In a gym bag is all the money they have left; their goal is to turn thousands of dollars in cash into many thousands more.

Art also hopes to save their marriage, much to the dismay of Marion, who has all but checked out, bitter over a long-ago affair and disillusioned with how Art has met middle age. Touring the falls, playing the roulette wheel — with a sure-fire system to win — and seeing the band Heart all figure into Art’s hail Mary of a plan to win back his wife before it’s too late — and, perhaps, keep their home.

O’Nan writes with a stunning precision and deep reservoir of empathy for Art and Marion — the same qualities that enlivened “Last Night at the Lobster,” his novel of the closing of a Red Lobster restaurant. My advice: Don’t make the mistake I did by waiting to read O’Nan. Read him now.

— Steve Mills, Tribune reporter

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The Odds: One of NPR’s Favorite Books of 2012

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npr-books-logo-colorThe Odds was picked as one of Maureen Corrigan’s favorite books of 2012:

That dazed-and-confused trend kicked off in January with Stewart O’Nan’s novella, The Odds, about a middle-aged, unemployed couple about to divorce in order to protect what little assets they have left. First, though, Marion and Art Fowler book a deluxe suite at one of the honeymoon hotels in Niagara Falls and get ready to gamble their remaining cash at the hotel casino. O’Nan’s go-for-broke literary style — by turns elegant and ruefully funny — rivets readers to the fateful spin of that roulette wheel.

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