James Salter's exalted place in American letters is based largely on the intense admiration of other writers, but his work resonates far beyond the realm of fellow craftsmen, addressing themes--youth, war, erotic love, marriage, life abroad, friendship--that speak to us all. Following the publication of his first novel, Salter left behind a military career of great promise to write full-time and--through decades of searching, exacting work--became one of American literature's master stylists. Only months before he died, at the age of eighty-nine, he agreed to serve as the first Kapnick Writer-in-Residence at the University of Virginia, where he composed and delivered the three lectures presented in this book and introduced by his friend and fellow novelist, National Book Award-winning author John Casey. Salter speaks to us here with an easy intimacy, sharing his unceasing enchantment with the books that made up his reading life, including works by Balzac, Flaubert, Babel (whose prose is "like a handful of radium"), Dreiser, Celine, Faulkner. These talks provide an invaluable opportunity to see the way in which a great writer reads. They also offer a candid look at the writing life--the rejection letters, not one but two negative reviews in the New York Times for the same book, writing in the morning or at night and worrying about money during the long afternoons. Salter raises the question, Why does one write? For wealth? For admiration, or a sense of "importance"? Confronting a blank sheet that always offers too many choices, practicing a vocation that often demands one write instead of live, the answer for Salter was creating a style that captured experience, in a world where anything not written down fades away. -- Amazon.com.

"James Salter (born James Horowitz in 1925) has been known throughout his career as a "writer's writer," acclaimed by such literary greats as Susan Sontag, Richard Ford, John Banville, and Peter Matthiessen for his lyrical prose, his insightful and daring explorations of sex, and his examinations of the inner lives of women and men. Conversations with James Salter collects interviews published from 1972 to 2014 with the award-winning author of The Hunters, A Sport and a Pastime, Light Years, and All That Is. Gathered here are his earliest interviews following acclaimed but moderately selling novels, conversations covering his work as a screenwriter and award-winning director, and interviews charting his explosive popularity after publishing All That Is, his first novel after a gap of thirty-four years. These conversations chart Salter's progression as a writer, his love affair with France, his military past as a fighter pilot, and his lyrical explorations of gender relations.The collection contains interviews from Sweden, Chile, France, and Argentina appearing for the first time in English. Included as well are published conversations from the United States, Canada, and Australia, some of which are significantly extended versions, giving this collection an international scope of Salter's wide-ranging career and his place in world literature"--

"Moacyr Scliar was the preeminent literary voice of the Jewish immigrant experience in modern Brazil. Now his most ambitiously satirical and irreverent novel is at last translated into English, offering not just a significant contribution to Latin American and Jewish literature but to world literature as well. In a past-life therapy session, a mysterious woman makes a remarkable breakthrough when she discovers that in a previous life she was one of King Solomon's seven hundred wives. In language that hilariously mixes modern jargon and biblical diction, she sets out to tell the story of her earlier incarnation three thousand years in the past, revealing how she went from a provincial nobody to a queen. Yet being royalty isn't all it's cracked up to be. As the least desirable of King Solomon's wives and concubines, she is unceremoniously discarded and forgotten in his harem. But as luck would have it, she possesses a unique gift: she is a woman who knows how to read and write. Once her talent is discovered, King Solomon charges her with writing what will become one of the most important texts in human history. Along the way our nameless narrator leverages her newfound status as royal scribe to bring about her own secret agenda. A brilliant feminist critique skewering the absurdities of patriarchy, The Woman Who Wrote the Bible is a comic masterpiece of truly biblical proportions"-- Provided by publisher.

For centuries writers have used participatory experience as a lens through which to better see the world at large and as a means of exploring the self. Considering various types of participatory writing as different strains of one style--immersion writing--Robin Hemley offers new perspectives and practical advice for writers of this nonfiction genre. Immersion writing can be broken down into the broad categories of travel writing, immersion memoir, and immersion journalism. Using the work of such authors as Barbara Ehrenreich, Hunter S. Thompson, Ted Conover, A. J. Jacobs, Nellie Bly, Julio Cortazar, and James Agee, Hemley examines these three major types of immersion writing and further identifies the subcategories of the quest, the experiment, the investigation, the infiltration, and the reenactment. Included in the book are helpful exercises, models for immersion writing, and a chapter on one of the most fraught subjects for nonfiction writers--the ethics and legalities of writing about other people. A Field Guide for Immersion Writing recalibrates and redefines the way writers approach their relationship to their subjects. Suitable for beginners and advanced writers, the book provides an enlightening, provocative, and often amusing look at the ways in which nonfiction writers engage with the world around them. A Friends Fund Publication.

"To Write Like a Woman is a rare example of a feminist tackling science fictuion using postmodern theory, which makes for a much more sophisticated and nuanced appraisal than the usual fare." ―Passion"Russ’ essays are witty and insightful. An excellent book for any writer or reader." ―Feminist Bookstore News"In her new book of essays... Russ continues to debunk and demand, edify and entertain.... Appreciative of surface aesthetics, she continually delves deeper than most critics, yet in terms so simple and accessible that her essays read like lively, angry, humorous dialogues conducted face-to-face with the author. Russ is the antithesis of the distant critic in her ivory tower." ―Paul Di Filippo, The Washington Post Book World"... 20 years of the author’s feisty reports from the front lines of literature." ―The San Francisco Review of Books"This is a book of imaginative and provoking essays, but you should read it for the sheer fun of it." ―The Women’s Review of Books"Collects more than two decades of criticism by Joanna Russ, one of the most perceptive, forthright and eloquent feminist commentators around." ―Feminist Bookstore News"... a super book....This is a book that, for once, really will appeal to readers of all kinds." ―Utopian Studies"If you enjoy science fiction, this is definitely a book that you’ll want to talk about. I found myself sneaking a few pages at times when I really didn’t have time to read." ―Jan Catano, AtlantisClassic essays on science fiction and feminism by Nebula and Hugo award-winning Joanna Russ. Here she ranges from a consideration of the aesthetic of science fiction to a reading of the lesbian identity of Willa Cather. To Write Like a Woman includes essays on horror stories and the supernatural, feminist utopias, popular literature for women (the "modern gothic"), and the feminist education of graduate students in English.

One of America's most popular Jewish writers, Chaim Potok (b. 1929) is the author of such novels as The Chosen (1967), The Promise (1969), The Book of Lights (1981), and Davita's Harp (1985). Each of his novels explores the tension between tradition and modernity, and the clash between Jewish culture and contemporary Western civilization, which he calls "core-to-core culture confrontation." Although primarily known as a novelist, Potok is an ordained Conservative rabbi and a world-class Judaic scholar who has also published children's books, theological discourses, biographies, and histories. Conversations with Chaim Potok presents interviews ranging from 1976 to 1999. Potok discusses the broad range of his writing and the deep influence of non-Jewish novels-in particular, Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man -on his work. Interviews bear witness to Potok's many other influences-Orthodox Jewish doctrine, Freudian psychoanalytical theory, Picasso's Guernica, and Jewish kabbalah mysticism. Though labeled an American Jewish writer, Potok argues that Flannery O'Connor should then be called an American Catholic writer and John Updike an American Protestant writer. "In his mind," editor Daniel Walden writes, "just as Faulkner was a writer focused on a particular place, Oxford, Mississippi, . . . so Potok's territory was a small section of New York City." Potok often explores conflict in his writings and in his interviews. Strict Jewish teachings deem fiction an artifice and therefore unnecessary, yet since the age of sixteen Potok has been driven to write novels. At the root of all of these conversations is Potok's intense interest in the turmoil between Jewish culture, religion, and tradition and what he calls "Western secular humanism." As he discusses his work, he continually includes broader issues, such as the state of Jewish literature and art, pointing out with pride and enthusiasm his belief that Jewish culture, in the twentieth century, has finally begun to have a significant role in producing and shaping the world's art and literature. Whether discussing the finer details of Talmudic textual analysis or his period of chaplaincy during the Korean War, Potok is articulate and philosophical, bringing deep consideration into what may seem small subjects. Although his novels and histories take place primarily in the recent past, the Chaim Potok that emerges from this collection is a writer deeply rooted in the tensions of the present. Daniel Walden is Professor Emeritus of American Studies, English and Comparative Literature at Penn State University. He has written or edited several books, including On Being Jewish (1974), Twentieth Century American Jewish Writers (1984), The World of Chaim Potok (1985), and American Jewish Poets: The Roots and the Stems (1990).