Chris Arvidson, Assistant Director of the National Committee for the New River, interviewed Josh Weil about his new book The New Valley. You can purchase the book at Josh’s Web site (where you can read some of Josh’s other work), at your local bookstore, and at Amazon.com.

Josh Weil is the author of the novella collection The New Valley (Grove Press, 2009), a New York Times Editors Choice. His fiction has been published in Granta, New England Review, American Short Fiction, and Narrative; he has written nonfiction for The New York Times, Granta Online, and Poets & Writers. Since earning his MFA from Columbia University, he has received a Fulbright grant, a Writer’s Center Emerging Writer Fellowship, and the Dana Award in Portfolio. He has been a fellow at both the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences. As the 2009 Tickner Fellow, he is the writer-in-residence at Gilman School in Baltimore, where he is at work on a novel. (more…)

Each year the English Club works in conjunction with the English Department in order to help sponsor writers and English events. On March 21, Radford University hosted the Highlander Literary Festival sponsored by the English Club. (more…)

We’ve seen various cases of nepotism over the years. There has been some controversy in West Virginia regarding the Governor and his daughter. Coaches have often been known to have a son on their staffs. And heck, Jeb Bush helped steal a Presidential election for his brother in 2000! (more…)

The summer vacation season is here, and folks everywhere are packing a book or two into their beach bags. We often recommend non-fiction books that might have politics or social justice at their core. But we know sometimes you just need some relaxation and entertainment.

Amid the proliferation of new fiction this year, two brightly macabre novels stand out as fine summer reads.

The first is Stephen King’s Duma Key, published in early 2008. The novel tells the story of Edgar Freemantle, a Minnesota building contractor who survives a construction accident that should have killed him. Emerging from a recovery nearly as terrifying as the accident, Edgar is not quite the person he was before.

In addition to the loss of his right arm, Edgar suffers a contracoup injury to the head in which the brain is affected on the opposite side of the impact. The result is that Edgar cannot quite think the way he did before, and is prone to moments of intense anger when he cannot speak what he is thinking. His wife crumbles under the emotional fallout, leaving him after twenty-odd years of marriage. Seeking the assistance of a psychologist, Edgar is advised to do the only thing that may save him: move to the Florida Keys. (more…)

Diving into a great book can make a person forget about all the day’s problems, relax the mind, and get into the storyline. But we don’t want to recommend the typical fluffy beach reading for you. Getting lost in this year’s summer reading will include learning about the peacemakers for our world, the shifting of American dominance, the ladies that helped shape our nation to what it is now, and many others. (more…)

by Dinty Moore
Nebraska Press
2008

In his recent book project, Dinty Moore has written a memoir—of sorts. This isn’t your father’s memoir, although it is a memoir about fathers; real fathers, would-be fathers, perhaps imaginary fathers. Between Panic & Desire uses the traditional narrative form of memoir but also explores a variety of other structures to give Moore’s account of his formative years spanning the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. (more…)