I’m taking a tiny break from my dissertation to prepare a syllabus for my fiction workshop in the fall. Because I am lucky as hell, I get to teach an intermediate fiction workshop! Two, in fact — I’ll be teaching in the spring and fall. I’ve been a teaching assistant for an intro fiction workshop before, but am really looking forward to having my own class. I’m planning to use the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction and supplement it with a few other stories. (I can’t leave out “The Fall River Axe Murders.”) Any recommendations for short fiction you think you definitely be taught in an undergrad fiction workshop? Stories you think definitely shouldn’t be taught?

In Alcestis news, Rebecca Chastain is now featuring an interview with me at her blog Number One Novels, where she publishes interviews with loads of first-time novelists describing their projects and their paths to publication. She’s also giving away two copies of Alcestis, kindly contributed by Soho Press. There are a number of ways to enter the contest, including tweeting about it — check out Rebecca’s directions in the interview link above.

And don’t forget that my amazing agent Diana Fox is still running an Alcestis-related giveaway, though not a giveaway of the book itself. Instead, if you buy a copy of Alcestis before April 15 and notify her, she’ll send you a free book of your choice by another Fox Literary author.

Since you have all these lovely chances to get free books, here’s a way to give back: donate to the Lambda Literary Foundation. Nicola Griffith explains why this is such a vital thing to do.

And finally, here’s a lovely post from historical novelist Stephanie Cowell about the power of historical fiction.

My fabulous agent Diana Fox is running two giveaways, including an Alcestis-related giveaway! If you purchase Alcestis between now and April 15 and email her a copy of your receipt, she’ll send you your choice of one book  (possibly signed!) by any Fox Literary author, or a $20 Amazon gift certificate. See the link above for more details — she’s also giving away copies of Seanan McGuire‘s Rosemary and Rue and A Local Habitation.

Have I mentioned lately that I heart my agent?

Also, forgot to mention — before P&P tonight, I’m going to hear fellow Soho Press author Cara Black read at the Bookwagon in Ashland! Her new Aimée Leduc mystery Murder in the Palais Royal is just out. I’ll be running from the reading to the play but am hoping to be able to stick around for her whole event — I’m sure it’ll be great.

Margaret Donsbach from HistoricalNovels.Info interviewed me about Alcestis, which she calls “full of poetic passages.” (There’s a short review of the book at HistoricalNovels.Info, too, and Margaret will soon be reviewing it for the Heritage Key site.)

Tonight I’m going to see an adaptation of Pride & Prejudice at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, one of the best things about visiting Ashland. I’m hoping that it’ll be better than the adaptation I saw at UT this fall, which I have to admit was pretty painful. (Actors who can’t manage British accents should not try to pretend that shouting in a higher-pitched voice is a worthwhile substitute.) Yesterday, I also discovered some exciting Austen news, from Diana Peterfreund, who explains why she loves Persuasion so much, and then reveals the following:

Children’s: Young Adult

Author of the Secret Society Girl series and Rampant Diana Peterfreund’s FOR DARKNESS SHOWS THE STARS, a post-apocalyptic retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, to Kristin Daly at Balzer & Bray, in a good deal, for publication in 2011, by Deidre Knight at The Knight Agency (NA).

This actually makes a lot of sense — much of the literary criticism written about Persuasion focuses on the uncertainty and anxiety evident in Austen’s portrayal of the diminution of the landed gentry, so transposing that class anxiety into a more explicitly dangerous post-apocalyptic world should be really interesting. Looking forward to this one. Diana answers more questions about it here.

Regarding another genius, Hilary Mantel writes about the Shakespearean authorship debate, which she calls “a tale of snobbery and ignorance, of unhistorical assumptions, of myths about the writing life sometimes fuelled by bestselling authors who ought to know better.” Ouch, and nicely put.

Finally, in exciting news for dorks like me, Patton Oswalt is writing a Wash-centric comic set after the conclusion of Serenity.

Con or Bust raised over $5000 to help fans of color attend Wiscon! And the copy of Alcestis I donated has already arrived with its new owner.

Sarah Johnson wrote an insightful post about “reviewerese” and the notion of authenticity in historical fiction. A sample:

When you see a novel described as impeccably researched, meticulously researched, or historically accurate (and you’ll find this in publicity material, too), what the reviewer may really mean is: “the author includes a lot of historical details that made the setting come alive” or “I didn’t notice anything obviously wrong” or “I learned a ton of new info from this book” or even “it has a massively long bibliography.” Or it could mean exactly what it says. Without knowing anything about the reviewer’s capability to judge such things, it’s impossible to know for sure.

Lapham’s Quarterly posts a chart of day jobs of famous writers, including Henry Fielding, Magistrate.

Finally: I’m reading An Instance of the Fingerpost and really enjoying it so far. I know it’s incredibly popular. Are there any other historical fiction books you think should be required reading for fans of the genre?

Thursday night’s reading was great fun — many friends in Ashland came to listen and asked some good questions. Bloomsbury Books is a lovely place to read, as you’ll see in the picture below. The bookstore itself was pretty quiet that evening, but we packed the upstairs balcony.

I read from the Prologue (which you can read here), Chapter 5, and Chapter 7, and talked a bit about historical fiction and about my next project, Killingly. I hope I’ll have the chance to come back and read from that book, eventually — once I write it!

This morning I filmed an interview with the Open Books, Open Minds TV program run by the Jackson County Library System — my very first TV interview. I’ll have a YouTube link to share here soon. I enjoyed it, though I had to keep trying to remember to speak up (I’m kind of a quiet talker).

Last night I also saw the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s 2010 production of Hamlet, which featured a great Hamlet and a few nonsensical adaptation choices. (I think contemporary settings need to justify themselves; “putting Hamlet in a suit looks cool” is not enough justification.) One production decision I loved, though, was the casting of the Ghost, who was played beautifully by deaf actor Howie Seago. This means that Hamlet and his father signed to each other, with Hamlet interpreting, in effect, for the hearing audience; and even more interestingly, the actors playing Claudius and Gertrude would sometimes slip into ASL, especially if they were speaking to or about Hamlet or his father. The performance I saw was also open captioned. Brilliant all around.

The reading last night was great — I’ll put up pictures this weekend. I’m currently getting ready for my first book group gathering, but first: Julia Rios from the Outer Alliance has just posted a Spotlight interview with me on the Outer Alliance blog. I talk about queerness in the Mycenaean world, managing multiple projects, and my favorite college novel ever, A Sweet Girl Graduate (which Julia actually tracked down on Project Gutenberg, even though I forgot to mention that I’d found it there!).

A few other quick links for today:

An article in the Telegraph interviewing the chair of this year’s Orange Prize judges, who laments that “women’s fiction” is often “miserable.” The article is fairly sensible on the whole but begins with the following bizarre quote:

There’s not been much wit and not much joy; there’s a lot of grimness out there… There are a lot of books about Asian sisters […], a lot of books that start with a rape. Pleasure seems to have become a rather neglected element in publishing.

The “pleasure” issue I get — I talk about that a lot here — but “a lot of books about Asian sisters”? What?

On a no less miserable but interesting note, previously unpublished extracts from letters among Bloomsbury group members about Virginia Woolf’s death.

And finally, two great posts by the INTERN (whose all-caps-ness never fails to make me laugh) about how to improve 1) your manuscript and 2) its chances.

Happy weekend, everybody!

Today at 7 pm I’m reading at Bloomsbury Books downtown in Ashland, Oregon! I’ll also be talking about historical fiction and why I write it. I’ll try to get a few pictures posted here in the next day or two — I’ve also got my first book group meeting tomorrow afternoon, and will be filming an interview with a local book TV show on Saturday. (The interview will eventually be up on YouTube; I’ll post a link when it’s available.)

More soon!

Today is the official publication date of The Unwritten Rule, my friend Elizabeth Scott‘s newest YA novel. Like all of her books, this one is wonderful — realistic and touching, and very sweet in the way that real life can be sweet, imperfections and all. Here’s a representative bit of advance praise:

“Trust Elizabeth Scott to create an exquisite portrait of longing so palpable, I yearned for the Forbidden Boy, too. Trust her to look unflinchingly at the undercurrents beneath the ‘cracked gloss’ of friendship: loyalty and love, jealousy and hurt. The Unwritten Rule is, above all, a superb study of what it means to be authentic when what you want collides with what you cannot have.” –Justina Chen, author of North of Beautiful

Elizabeth also has incredibly dedicated fans who made countdown widgets for the book’s release, tweeted about the book, and even wrote songs about it. (I love the YA lit world. I don’t even know what I’d do if somebody ever wrote a song about Alcestis. Glow with joy for a week straight, obviously, but also be very surprised!) Anyway, if you’re interested in reading about friendships between girls, Elizabeth writes them beautifully, in all their complexity. Highly recommended.

From SonomaLass on Twitter, a smart essay response to reading Alcestis that touches on one of the central problems of the myth:

Alcestis is one of those really problematic figures for a feminist — she’s SUCH a creature of the patriarchy, and yet she’s obviously a strong and brave woman.  If you don’t know the myth, here it is in a nutshell:  she volunteers to go to Hades in her husband’s place when it is his time to die, and then Heracles (a friend of her husband’s) invades Hades and brings her back to the land of the living.  So yeah, she is a self-sacrificing wife who recognizes that her husband’s life is worth more than her own (ew), but she is also brave enough to stand up and say “take me instead” and strong enough to survive three days in the realm of the dead with enough life left in her that she can take back her place among the living.

This is exactly what I wanted to examine, and I’m so glad to hear from readers who are thinking about Alcestis’s story in similar terms. Also, it’s never bad to see your book being called a profound reading experience!