Author Archives: SJW
Brooklyn Bookfest
Sunday, September 12, 2010
10am: How Things Shake Out. Stewart O’Nan (Songs For the Missing), Siri Hustvedt (The Shaking Woman) and T Cooper, The Beaufort Diaries read from their new books and discuss the intersection of reality and fiction. ST. FRANCIS MARONEY SCREENING ROOM
2pm: What Fresh Hell is This? Imagine you’re stuck someplace. You can’t get out. The behavior of everyone around you continually increases your discomfort. Now what do you do? Readings by Sigrid Nunez, Stewart O’Nan, and Benjamin Percy, followed by Q&A. ST. FRANCIS READING ROOM
Writer Stewart O’Nan took roundabout route to successful writing career
From the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:
Writer Stewart O’Nan is sitting at D’s SixPax and Dogz in Regent Square, talking about his life, his work and returning to Pittsburgh last year after a 30-year absence.
He talks about his family — his father, an engineer; his mother, a schoolteacher — and how they set examples for him, and of his wife, Trudy, a Butler native and social worker, who convinced him to quit his career as an aerospace engineer to study writing. He speaks of the proverbial Pittsburgh work ethic and how that has stood him well in all of his endeavors.
Then the conversation turns to former jobs.
“I was a dishwasher,” he says. “Every time I do a dish, a record falls. … I never got to be waitstaff, I never got to be a busboy. I was always a dishwasher, and that’s where you get to hear the best stories.”
Small wonder then that O’Nan, 49, is one of the best storytellers in contemporary fiction. His novels and stories often spotlight characters who are ignored by the mainstream, though they often are in plain sight.
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Emily, Alone: A Novel
B&N Finalists for 2009 Discover Great New Writers Awards
Barnes & Noble Announces the Finalists for the 2009 Discover Great New Writers Awards:
Fiction
Barb Johnson, More of This World or Maybe Another (HarperPerennial)
Victor Lodato, Mathilda Savitch (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
C. E. Morgan, All the Living (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Nonfiction
Dave Cullen, Columbine (Twelve)
Toby Lester, The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map that Gave America Its Name (Free Press)
Neil White, In the Sanctuary of Outcasts: A Memoir (William Morrow)
The Jurists
Two panels of distinguished literary jurists (each of whom was selected for the Discover program earlier in their careers) selected the finalists and will select the winners. Serving as this year’s fiction jurists are Kathryn Harrison, the author of numerous books, including the novels Thicker Than Water, Envy, and The Seal Wife, and the memoirs The Kiss and The Mother Knot; Stewart O’Nan, the author of a dozen novels, including Snow Angels, Last Night at the Lobster, and A Prayer for the Dying, among other books; and fiction writer David Schickler, the author of Kissing in Manhattan and Sweet and Vicious.
This year’s nonfiction judges include Lee Martin, author of the memoirs, From Our House and Turning the Bones, and several works of fiction, including The Bright Forever, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Rachel Simon, whose works include a novel, The Magic Touch, and two memoirs, Riding the Bus with My Sister, and Building a Home with My Husband; and Danielle Trussoni, whose memoir, Falling Through the Earth, was named one of the best books of 2006 by the New York Times, and whose first novel, Angelology, will be published in March.
The Works of Stewart O'Nan 