New interview
Posted on 27. Dec, 2011 by Scott.
I recently did a long interview with a great former student, Julie Judkins, for Fiction Writers Review. Read me spouting on and on about Bob Dyan, New Jersey, poetry, and the like, here: http://fictionwritersreview.com/interviews/dont-take-yourself-too-seriously-an-interview-with-scott-nadelson
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Aftermath reviews
Posted on 27. Nov, 2011 by Scott.
Reviews of Aftermath have been trickling in this fall; thanks to all who’ve read it (and had nice things to say). Here are some highlights:
From The Jewish Review: “The former Oregon Book Award Winner’s prose is elegant in its unpretentiousness. The depth of his insight is stunning. The breadth and detail of his knowledge of the ordinary lives of men and women in widely varying walks of life is astonishing.” Read the whole review here: http://www.jewishreview.org/arts/Nadelsons-new-stories-explore-how-we-cope
From the Ploughshares blog: “Nadelson creates characters so endearingly flawed that regardless of our actual similarities, we relate to each of them. Each page documents our own fears, insecurities, and heartbreaks. Each sentence becomes the moment we first remember hope failing.” Read the whole review here: http://word.emerson.edu/ploughshares/2011/11/22/aftermath/
From the Portland Monthly: “Nadelson is master of the anticlimax… Aftermath is an often-despairing testament to the elusiveness of closure, the infinite and insurmountable distance between even intimate lovers, but also to the human capacity for growth.” Read the whole review here: http://www.portlandmonthlymag.com/arts-and-entertainment/articles/scott-nadelson-aftermath-october-2011/
From Northwest Booklovers: “What illuminates these stories is how seamlessly Nadelson opens a window to the workings of the human heart.” Read the whole review here: http://www.nwbooklovers.org/2011/08/26/aftermath-by-scott-nadelson/
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Notable Essay of 2010
Posted on 11. Oct, 2011 by Scott.
The editors of The Best American Essays named “Go Ahead and Look” a Notable Essay of 2010. The essay was originally published in Oregon Humanities. Read it here: http://oregonhumanities.org/magazine/section/writing/scott-nadelson-on-forbidden-looking.
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Aftermath goes live!
Posted on 07. Sep, 2011 by Scott.
My new story collection, Aftermath, was released on September 1. To catch the Nadelson world tour (from Portland to Corvallis), check out the schedule of events here: http://scottnadelson.com/events/.
I’ve been busy giving interviews and writing essays about the book for blogs and websites. Here are a few recent ones:
http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/snadelson/2011/08/scott-nadelson-the-tnb-self-interview/
http://www.nwbooklovers.org/2011/08/31/finding-an-angle-of-vision-by-scott-nadelson/
http://www.hawthornebooks.com/blog/2011/08/essay-from-scott-nadelson/
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Essay in The Southern Review
Posted on 08. Jul, 2011 by Scott.
My essay, “Three Muses,” a tale of young lust, literary influence, and flirting with Edna O’Brien, appears in the Summer 2011 issue of one of my favorite lit mags, The Southern Review: http://www.lsu.edu/thesouthernreview/CurrentIssue.html. Very excited about this one.
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First Nonfiction Book Fall 2012
Posted on 08. Jul, 2011 by Scott.
Hawthorne Books recently purchased my first book of literary nonfiction, The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress, and have scheduled it to be published in October of 2012. Here’s a description:
Beginning in the summer of 2004, Scott Nadelson’s life fell apart. His fiancée left him a month before their planned wedding. He moved into a drafty attic. His car’s brakes went out. He learned that his cat was dying. Over the next two years, he’d struggle, with equivocal and sometimes humiliating results, to get back on his feet, in the process re-examining his past to understand his present circumstances.
More than a collection of autobiographical essays, The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress is a literary self-portrait that revolves around the dissolution of a relationship but encompasses the long process of a young man’s halting self-discovery. Exploring episodes from the life of its author/narrator marked by failure, suffering, and hope, as well as literary and cultural influence, the book weighs the things that make us want to give up against the things that keep us going. Though many of the pieces are comic and self-deprecating—some self-lacerating—they are above all meditations on the nature of the self and the way it can be constructed through memory, desire, and the imagination. Together they form a larger narrative, a search for fulfillment and identity in a life often governed by fear.
With humor and unflinching honesty, Scott Nadelson scrutinizes his life to discover who he is and finds just how elusive such a discovery can be. To read the resulting book is to join him on a personal journey that is thoughtful, surprising, occasionally hilarious, and unapologetically human.
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New story and essays
Posted on 08. Feb, 2011 by Scott.
A big month for me: I’ve got a new story in American Literary Review and new essays in New England Review, New Ohio Review, and American Literary Review online.
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Recent Interviews
Posted on 15. Jan, 2011 by Scott.
I’ve recently done interviews for the blogs of two terrific new journals. Here’s one about writing in general with John Walker at Trachodon: http://www.cheekteethblog.com/2011/01/angle-of-vision-conversation-with-scott.html#more. And another with Shane Oshetski of Camera Obscura about my story “Backfill”: http://www.obscurajournal.com/aperture/.
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Essay in The Writer’s Chronicle
Posted on 18. Nov, 2010 by Scott.
My essay, “What About the Suffering?: The Quiet Power of Minor Characters” is in the December 2010 issue of The Writer’s Chronicle. In it, I discuss the varied roles of minor characters in short fiction, examining in particular “A Trip to the Grundelsee” by David Malouf and “Three Years” by Chekhov. If you’re a member of AWP, you can read it here: http://elink.awpwriter.org/m/awpChron/articles/snadelson01.lasso.
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“Oslo” named distinguished story in Best American
Posted on 04. Oct, 2010 by Scott.
My story, “Oslo,” which first appeared in upstreet Vol. 5, was named by the editors of Best American Short Stories as one of the distinguished stories of 2009. In other words, I’ve made it to the back of the book!