A terminal degree and professorial praise from a noted university usually guarantee the recipient a running start at a successful career. Not so in at least one venue, where rejection and failure is the norm: creative writing. For fiction writers, particularly, noteworthy success redounds to few and then usually only after years of hard work, multiple failures and, finally, some good luck—often serendipitous—which can change fortunes overnight.
Such was the case for two Washington University alumni who earlier this year found their new novels lauded on the front page of the New York Times Sunday Book Review in consecutive months. But they arrived there from opposite directions and via markedly different—though similarly difficult—journeys.
My interviews of Adam Ross and John Brandon appear in the December 2010 edition of Washington Magazine. You can read the article here.
Tagged as:
Adam Ross,
book reviews,
Citrus County,
John Brandon,
literature,
Mr. Peanut
The struggle for creative writers: two case histories with happy endings
by Rick Skwiot on December 15, 2010 · 0 comments
in Books,Literary Commentary,Rick Skwiot,St. Louis
A terminal degree and professorial praise from a noted university usually guarantee the recipient a running start at a successful career. Not so in at least one venue, where rejection and failure is the norm: creative writing. For fiction writers, particularly, noteworthy success redounds to few and then usually only after years of hard work, multiple failures and, finally, some good luck—often serendipitous—which can change fortunes overnight.
Such was the case for two Washington University alumni who earlier this year found their new novels lauded on the front page of the New York Times Sunday Book Review in consecutive months. But they arrived there from opposite directions and via markedly different—though similarly difficult—journeys.
My interviews of Adam Ross and John Brandon appear in the December 2010 edition of Washington Magazine. You can read the article here.
Tagged as: Adam Ross, book reviews, Citrus County, John Brandon, literature, Mr. Peanut