Ann Beattie

Fiction "The Lost Memory of Skin" (Ecco) by Russell Banks. Coming Tuesday. Banks, one of our finest and most adventurous novelists, is not afraid to tackle big, tough topics that persistently bedevil the human species, and with his 17th book, he has...

I remember my Ann Beattie moment. It was in the fall of 1984, just after I'd graduated from college. I was living in Manhattan and, while trying to get up the nerve and the funds to move to California, working......

The works of John Updike will be celebrated and examined at the inaugural John Updike Conference, to be held this fall in Reading, Penn. Updike, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, may be best remembered as the author of the Harry......

The Age of Movies The Selected Writings of Pauline Kael Edited by Sanford Schwartz Library of America, $40 Witty, entertaining and often exhilarating, this wide-ranging collection of pieces captures the film critic at her best. Alice James A...

Between the presidencies of Richard Nixon/Gerald Ford (1974) and George W. Bush (2006), Ann Beattie published 48 stories in The New Yorker, one of which was included in "The Best American Short Stories of the Century." These stories are collected in...

Words & Ideas Compiled by Grace Krilanovich SUNDAY 826LA Adult Writing Seminar Series: TV Writing: Panelists include Jane Espenson, Drew Z. Greenberg and Damon Lindelof. Meltdown Comics, 7522 W. Sunset Blvd., L.A. 7 p.m. $12-$15. (213) 413-3388. http:/...

Words & Ideas Compiled by Grace Krilanovich. SUNDAY 826LA Adult Writing Seminar Series: TV Writing: A series of four panel discussions featuring industry professionals will cover multiple aspects of writing for television. Panelists include Allan Loeb,...

In the late 1980s, when I was a graduate student working on short stories and flirting with the idea of a novel, I came across an essay that was being passed around my circle of friends. It was titled "Writing in the Cold: The First Ten Years," and the...

The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To A Novel DC Pierson Vintage Contemporaries: 240 pp., $14 paper As writers such as Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem have embraced their comic-inspired youth, revealing an intimate love for the medium and an...