As is our wont, we follow deep discussions of non-fiction, poetry, and music with… a giraffe? Somewhere, on some level, this makes sense. Honest. John Clute, Guy Gavriel Kay, Michael Dirda, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Cecelia Holland, Cat Rambo, and Peter Straub all pile on. John Clute I agree with Guy entirely, and he’s just in time. [...]

Discussions of non-fiction lead to discussions of poetry lead inevitably to discussions of music. Cecelia Holland, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Peter Straub, F. Brett Cox, Ellen Datlow, Michael Dirda, Guy Gavriel Kay, Paul Graham Raven, and Russell Letson lend their musings. As always, this discussion is broken up into multiple pages for ease of reading. If you’d [...]

Karen Burnham “… and I haven’t even started on poetry.” If anyone would like to follow up on Guy’s post (near the end of the previous discussion) and mention any poetry that they find useful/inspirational, I’ll happily run that as an extra discussion. I feel that poetry is often sadly neglected, and that it is [...]

What non-fiction books/magazines/journals have you found particularly valuable? This could be in terms of researching a novel, for understanding literature (genre or non), for teaching, or for general insights about the world. Gardner Dozois, Cecelia Holland, Elizabeth Hand, Karen Lord, Ellen Klages, Guy Gavriel Kay, Peter Straub, Cat Rambo, John Clute and others chime in [...]

In the 90th (!) episode of the Coode Street Podcast, Gary Wolfe mentioned that he didn’t like to say that literature ‘evolved,’ that he felt it demeaned/diminished early work. As an example, he pointed out that little dystopian literature ever topped Brave New World, so feels a bit wrong to say that dystopian literature ‘evolved’ [...]

Welcome to another single-author focused edition of the Locus Roundtable. This time Greg Egan is in the spotlight, as I egregiously abuse my position by wrangling some very kind individuals into talking about my personal current obsession. Participating in this discussion are Gardner Dozois, whose early championing of Egan’s short fiction helped to make him [...]

Today’s Locus podcast features Teresa Frohock, author of Miserere, and Stina Leicht, author of Of Blood and Honey. Both of them are part of Nightshade Books‘ fantastic 2011 line-up of debut authors.   This podcast was fraught with technical difficulties, and I want to extend my thanks to Teresa and Stina for putting up with [...]