Pen on Fire#3 on Book Soup's list

This is so cool, especially since Pen on Fire was published in 2004. It's #3 on their trade paperback nonfiction list. Here's the link to Book Soup. (Scan down.) Thanks to all who made this possible, and thanks to everyone who, since the book came out in 2004, bought it and made possible a number of printings. Many thanks and a virtual hug.

Teaching a class at UC-Irvine Extension...

...beginning on Monday. Five weeks. Check it out here.

And tomorrow's show will be co-hosted by Marrie and me, and our guests will be Sara Gruen, author of Ape House, and Dennis Palumbo, author of Mirror Image. Tune in at 9 a.m. PT at KUCI-FM, 88.9 FM in Orange Co., California, or at iTunes at News/Talk radio.

Greg Breining and Literary Agent Jill Marr

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett interviews Greg Breining, author of Super Volcano: The Ticking Time Bomb Beneath Yellowstone National Park and literary agent Jill Marr.

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(Broadcast date: April 28, 2010)

Pen on Fire Salon with Maile Meloy and Mona Simpson

Our next writers salon will take place on Tuesday, October 12, at 7 p.m. Our authors: Maile Meloy and Mona Simpson.

Maile Meloy's most recent book, Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It, was a national bestseller in hardcover and a California Book Awards silver medalist, and was named one of the top ten books of 2009 by The New York Times. She is also the author of the story collection Half in Love, and the novels Liars and Saints and A Family Daughter. Her stories have been published in The New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope: All-Story, and other publications. She has been shortlisted for Britain's Orange Prize, and has received The Paris Review's Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, the PEN/Malamud Award, the American Academy of Art and Letters' Rosenthal Foundation Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2007 she was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists.

Mona Simpson studied poetry at Berkeley, then worked as a journalist before moving to New York to attend Columbia’s MFA program. During graduate school, she published her first short stories in Ploughshares, The Iowa Review and Mademoiselle. She stayed in New York and worked as an editor at The Paris Review for five years while finishing her first novel, Anywhere But Here, made into a 1999 film starring Susan Sarandon. After that, she wrote The Lost Father, A Regular Guy and Off Keck Road. Her work as been awarded several prizes: a Whiting Prize, a Guggenheim, a grant from the NEA, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, a Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Prize, a Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize, a Pen Faulkner finalist, and most recently a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

If you'd like to read more or register, click here. Hope to see you on the 12th!

Pen on Fire Writers Salon: Dennis Palumbo and Daniel Pyne

Here are photos from our last salon. Fun night, great setting, wonderful authors.

Novella Carpenter

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett interviews Novella Carpenter, author of Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer.

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(Broadcast date: July 8, 2010)

Tomorrow's show: Claudia Dreifuss and Jeff Lindsay

Tomorrow on Writers on Writing, my guests will be Claudia Dreifuss, author of Higher Education: How Colleges are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids, published by Times Books, and Jeff Lindsay, author of Dexter is Delicious, published by Doubleday.

Tune in at 9 a.m. PT at 88.9 FM KUCI or listen online at www.kuci.org or at iTunes/Talk, News radio.

Thanks for listening!

Mission Viejo Readers Festival

I'll be here, too, with a ton of interesting authors. Come one, come all!

Salon at the Montage, Laguna Beach

I'll be here in October, as will many fine writers. Check it out!

Speaker Series: Susan Straight and Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum

Susan Straight, author of A Million Nightingales, Highwire Moon and the forthcoming Take One Candle Light a Room (October 2010) and Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, author of Ms. Hempel Chronicles and Madeleine is Sleeping appear at the Pen on Fire Speaker Series at the Scape Gallery in Corona del Mar on October 27, 2009.

Download audio.

(Broadcast date: October 27, 2009)

Mary Roach and Jane Vandenburgh

Marrie Stone interviews Mary Roach, author of Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void and Jane Vandenburgh, author of Architecture of the Novel: A Writer's Handbook

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(Broadcast date:August 18, 2010)

Today's Show

Greetings!

Join Marrie Stone this morning as she interviews John McNally, author of The Creative Writer's Survival Guide: Advice from an Unrepentant Novelist and literary agent Ted Weinstein.

Tune in online at www.kuci.org or 88.9 FM in Irvine at 9:00 a.m. (PT), or listen to the podcast of the show that will be posted, right here, in the next few weeks.

Thanks for listening!

The West Hollywood Book Fair

On the last Sunday of September is the W. Hollywood Book Fair. I'll be on a noir panel early in the day and will moderate a fiction panel in the afternoon. Come by and say hi. It's a wonderful fair, with lots of panels and colorful people watching. It's free, no need for panel reservations, and I love it.

Pen on Fire Speaker Series: Dennis Palumbo and Daniel Pyne

Our next salon will take place on Tuesday, Sept. 14, at 7 p.m. at Scape Gallery. Join me in conversation with authors Dennis Palumbo and Daniel Pyne. More here.

Laila Lalami and Howard Norman

Marrie Stone interviews Laila Lalami, author of Secret Son and Howard Norman, author of What is Left the Daughter.

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(Broadcast date: August 11, 2010)

Ann Brashares and Raymond Bean

Marrie Stone interviews Ann Brashares, author of My Name Is Memory, and Raymond Bean, author of Sweet Farts.

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(Broadcast date: Jul 28, 2010)

Travis is turning 16 tomorrow. I asked him if he wanted a party. No party, but can we go to the desert? he asked. Wanted to return to Rancho Las Palmas, in Rancho Mirage, his favorite desert getaway, where we've been coming since he was a toddler burning his feet on the hot steps. (He's sure to wear sandals now...)

Connie Orsak, RLP's guest experience manager, made sure Travis would have a special time and make a great memory of his 16th, so this cake arrived yesterday after we did. Travis said, I have a cake with a chocolate palm tree and chocolate golf balls.

And it was lemon. His favorite.

Orange Coast Magazine's new literary critic

Yep, that'd be me.

The wonderful and funny Marylin Hudson had to give up her column because of illness, and then died on August 3. She was instrumental in bringing literary events to Orange County via Roundtable West, which I spoke at when Pen on Fire was published in 2004. Marty Smith, Orange Coast's editor, offered the book reviewing gig to me and I said yes. My first books column is in November.

If you're an Orange County, CA, author, or have a book that's based in Orange Co., or were born here or teach here or have some connection to here, let me know.

Laura Jacobs

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett interviews Laura Jacobs, author of The Bird Catcher.

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(Broadcast date: July 14, 2010)

Anita Shreve and John McNally

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett interviews Anita Shreve, author of A Change in Altitude and John McNally, author of After the Workshop.

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(Broadcast Date: June 10, 2010)