News from Lynn Sloan - Page 3 of 7

March 20, 2021

From Superstition Review

Lynn Sloan: Patty, I’ve enjoyed and admired your work for years, so it’s a real treat to have a chance to ask you about your writing and your new story collection, Responsible Adults. Great title. It’s the title of one of your stories, but what it suggests, a bad situation where a sound, responsible adult is needed, can be applied broadly to this entire collection. Reversing those two words of the title to adults responsible also works. In these stories, it is usually the adult, the one in charge, who is responsible for the harm done. When in the process of pulling together this collection did you choose this title?

Patricia Ann McNair: Hello, Lynn, and what a pleasure to talk with you as well! I think you are exactly right that these stories and the situations the characters find themselves in ache for the intervention of a responsible adult. That was something that became clear to me as I started to put these pieces into a binder to see what they might look like as a collection. I hadn’t finished the story that the title Responsible Adults comes from quite yet, and in a way that has never happened before, the title for the collection came to me before I had a story for it. I just liked the sound of it, Responsible Adults, especially as I thought of it in regards to the relationships in the stories. “Who is responsible here” can have a different meaning from “Who is responsible for this?” One implies a sort of blame, an insinuation of guilt, the other assumes that someone is in charge. Each of these ideas speaks to my stories in some way, so, yeah, the title stuck with me. And then I had to find one of my unfinished, untitled stories that might make use of those two words as well. A sort of backward approach for me; I usually like to find a title that has surfaced organically in a story and can do double duty for the collection. But this time the title asserted itself into and onto the book.

To read more:
October 21, 2020

The Past Revisited

Currently, the Australian Center for Contemporary Art is looking back at its exhibition history with a series of video lectures that examine how those shows came together and their impact.

Twenty six years ago my photographs of individuals living with AIDS and HIV illnesses were included in this exceptional exhibit at what was then called the National Gallery of Australia, and is now called the ACCA. In this time of another international health crisis, the curator of the exhibition, Dr. Ted Gott, provides an engaging, meaningful video lecture, well-illustrated, about the AIDS pandemic and the response of artists. I was honored to have my work included in the exhibition, and honored again to have my work with this video.
October 1, 2020

On the Board of Directors of the Society of Midland Authors

In May 2019, I was elected to the Board of Directors of the Society of Midland Authors to serve a three-year term. The Midland Authors was founded in 2015 to create “a closer association among writers of the Middle West” and to stimulate “creative literary effort.” I’m honored to a part of this institution that does so much to promote the interests of Midwestern writers.
October 4, 2019

Fomite Authors at Women & Children First Bookstore

The unofficial Chicago branch of Fomite authors met at Women & Children First Bookstore in Chicago to celebrate the launch of Julie Justicz’s debut novel Degrees of Difficulty.

Jan English Leary, Thicker Than Blood (Fomite 2015), Skating on the Vertical (Fomite 2017)
Maggie Kast, A Free, Unsullied Land (Fomite 2015)
Julie E. Justicz, Degrees of Difficulty (Fomite 2019)
Lynn Sloan, Principles of Navigation (Fomite 2015), This Far Isn’t Far Enough (Fomite 2018)
September 30, 2019

I Interview Julie Justicz for Fiction Writers Review

I met Julie around ten years ago when we were in residence at the Ragdale Foundation. We were both staying in the historic, beautiful but drafty, main house during a snowy stretch. Julie had a private bath, but I had a room with good heat. Over cups of tea in the kitchen we discovered we liked the same tea, black, strong, with milk, and were reading the same authors, Alice Munro, Michael Cunningham, Andrea Barrett. In the years since Julie and I have kept up.

Now with the release of her novel Degrees of Difficulty from Fomite Press, also my press, I’m delighted to learn more about her novel and her writing process.

To read the interview, click
July 31, 2019

Booksie’s Blog Reviews THIS FAR ISN’T FAR ENOUGH

“Each story stands on its own as a separate jewel… ” Thank you, Booksie!
To go to Booksie’s blog: click.

In these fourteen short stories, Lynn Sloan invites the reader into her thoughts about life and delights and surprises them. I don’t read anthologies that often as they are often repetitive; each story showing another take on events that ends up being much like the story before and the story after. That’s not true of Sloan’s work. Each story stands on its own as a separate jewel, displaying a quirky twist that the reader rarely sees coming.

In Nature Rules, a woman who has withdrawn from life and all its demands on her is pulled back into her children’s lives in a crisis. In Near Miss, a painter must decide between his wife and a potential child and his freedom to pursue other women. In Ollie’s Back, a chef is trying to make a comeback after an investor ruined his restaurant. These are just three of the stories but each is fresh and engaging. This book is recommended for readers interested in choices made by individuals and the fallout from those decisions.
July 29, 2019

“Ollie’s Back” aired on Selected Shorts

My short story “Ollie’s Back,” included in my collection This Far Isn’t Far Enough, was performed by Nate Corddry last year, and is now released in the Selected Shorts program Forgiving and Forgetting. The program is aired on NPR and available as a podcast.

July 25, 2019

Forgiving and Forgetting

Guest host Robert Sean Leonard presents stories about transgression, misunderstandings, and betrayal. “Initials Etched on a Dining Room Table Lockeport Nova Scotia” call up a host of memories in this story by Peter Orner, performed by Maulik Pancholy. A chef down on his luck gets a new start in “Ollie’s Back,” by Lynn Sloan, performed by Nate Corddry. And parents disagree about the raising of a lively daughter, in “Light,” by Lesley Nneka Arimah, performed by Crystal Dickinson.

Listen here: >
July 15, 2019

How to Read a Photograph: A Workshop for Writers

On Saturday, August 17, 2019 I will lead the workshop on How to Read a Photograph at Northwestern Summer Writers’ Conference, Chicago.

Writers collect and use photographs as records of facts and as inspiration. Getting it at a glance—that’s what we like about photographs. They are simple; they yield their information without a struggle; their language is universal; seeing is natural: Each of these statements is false. Photographs are deceptive and they are filled with information beyond what is available at a glance. Learning how to see what photographs describe can deepen and enrich our writing. In this workshop we will explore ways to read photographs to discover what is within or beyond the surface representation.
August 27, 2018

Panel Discussion on Short Story Writing
August 16, 2018

BookNAround reviews This Far Isn’t Far Enough

Review: This Far Isn’t Far Enough by Lynn Sloan

Short story collections are notoriously hard to sum up succinctly. Unless they are interconnected stories, they might be linked by theme or even just by the fact of their author. And often some stories are far stronger than others. Luckily, in Lynn Sloan’s emotionally resonant collection, This Far Isn’t Far Enough, the stories are linked thematically and all of them are strong and complete pieces.

Each of these unique stories has complicated characters who embody endurance and resilience. They are stories of comebacks, of turning points, of surprises, many layered, masterful, and full of depth and feeling. The writing is crisp and precise. And the reader is given the gift of unexpected, but entirely earned, endings. There’s a cook who operates an illegal restaurant out of his house after his business partner was caught dealing drugs. There’s a woman whose ex shows up when their son gets arrested and just as she’s dealing with a bear at her remote home. There’s an aging actor faced with his partner, once a well known actress herself, sinking into the grip of Alzheimer’s and the demands her care puts on him and his career. There’s a photography professor asked to recommend for tenure a man she knows to be a sexual predator. There’s a woman who agrees to meet a former lover long after he left her. In each of these and the other stories, there is a sense of loss, of grief, of betrayal, but also a push back against the clearly defined and expected way forward. Sloan’s characters are haunted by the past and their decisions and placed in the seminal situations of their stories, they make interesting and real choices about moving forward. For those looking for an introduction to the short story form, these stories are polished gems. The opposite of uplifting, they are powerful and affecting and will certainly appeal to a literarily-minded audience.

Thanks to Caitlin Hamilton Summie for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Review: This Far Isn’t Far Enough by Lynn Sloan