brandon r. schrand

Another update on the Book of Dads front: it has been given a nice review by the Washington Post and mine is one of the four essays mentioned. Tony Doerr’s stunning essay is also mentioned which is cool because we did a reading together last month.

If you are stumped as to what to get for Father’s Day this year, you might consider picking up a copy of The Book of Dads, a collection of moving, funny, and quirky essays on the “Joys, Perils, and Humiliations of Fatherhood.” My essay, “Comparative History,” sits alongside greats like Nick Flynn, Rick Bass, Steve Almond, Jim Shepard, Anthony Doerr, Ben Fountain, Sven Birkerts, and others. The book is available at a bookstore near you.

In the meantime, check out this Book of Dads interview with editor Ben George, Jim Shepard, and Darin Strauss on the Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC. It’s a great interview and my essay even gets a shout-out around minute 27.

Issue 47 of Columbia: A Journal of Art & Literature is now out. It’s an impressive annual publication and my essay, “Growing Up Superfund,” sits alongside some greats like Gary Snyder, Lydia Millet, and Elizabeth Wurtzel. You can also find a panel discussion featuring Mark Greif, Heidi Julavits, and Justin Taylor, as well as an interview with Michael Ondaatje. They have even included a teaser from my essay. Be sure to check it out and ask for the issue at any independent bookstore.

Borne on Air: Essays by Idaho Writers (EWU Press), has just been released. My essay, “Eleven Ways to Consider Air,” is included in the volume, as are essays by a number of renowned writers such as Kim Barnes, Claire Davis, Buddy Levy, Joy Passanante, and others. Look, too, for some knock-out pieces from up-and-coming writers Denice Turner and Jeanette Weaskus.

Edited by Mary Clearman Blew and Phil Druker, the anthology is the third installment in a series on the elements. Previous volumes include Written on Water and Forged in Fire.

Tomorrow night at 7:30 PM in the University of Idaho Law School Courtroom, I will be reading with Anthony Doerr from the forthcoming anthology, The Book of Dads. Editor Ben George will be there as well talking about the book and its genesis. The event is free and should be a good time.

The Enders Hotel received a warm review in the Winter 2009 issue of Western American Literature, the peer reviewed journal of the Western Literature Association.

“Longing is the central theme of Brandon Schrand’s extraordinary debut memoir, The Enders Hotel–the longing of a boy to be a man, the longing of the man to connect with the boy he once was, and the longing of a son for a father he never knew. . . Schrand’s lyrical prose and poetic sensibility engender beauty amid a landscape that has been gutted.  .  . It is debatable as to who has the stronger hold of the reader in this memoir–the language, the ragged band of ‘enders’ passing through the pages, or the narrator himself, a boy who desperately wants to ‘take his spot in the world of men’. . .We have so few coming-of-age memoirs that detail the inner life of boys, especially western boys.”

The Enders Hotel picked up a good review in the recent issue of Fourth Genre, one of the leading journals of literary nonfiction. The reviewer,  Jocelyn Bartkevicius, writes, in part, the following:

“[The Enders Hotel] is a book about longing for absent men. The book opens with a gorgeous but brief chapter called ‘Restless Men,’ which links the details of an accidental shooting at the hotel’s bar during his mother’s shift to Schrand’s absent biological father (who served time in the same prison the shooter gets sentenced to). The absence of this father, whom Schrand has never met, haunts the rest of the story intermittently, mostly in the form of his longing for some glimpse of that father… The restless, disappearing men and the crumbling hotel become points of memory in a past that is stalked and recreated in this book.”

I have just learned that  I have been admitted into Yaddo, the artist colony in Saratoga Springs, New York, for a one-month residency this summer. From their website:

“Collectively, artists who have worked at Yaddo have won 63 Pulitzer Prizes, 25 MacArthur Fellowships, 60 National Book Awards, 22 National Book Critics Circle Awards, 108 Rome Prizes, 45 Whiting Writers’ Awards, a Nobel Prize (Saul Bellow, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976), and countless other honors. Many books by Yaddo authors have been made into films. Past visitors include  James Baldwin, Leonard Bernstein, Truman Capote, Aaron Copland, Philip Guston, Patricia Highsmith, Langston Hughes, Ted Hughes, Alfred Kazin, Ulysses Kay, Jacob Lawrence, Sylvia Plath, Katherine Anne Porter, Mario Puzo, Clyfford Still, and Virgil Thomson.”

I will be in residence from June–July and will be working on my book-in-progress, Works Cited.

As I have mentioned here recently,  I have been invited to read and sit on a couple of panels at the 2009 Get Lit! festival in Spokane, Washington. This year, they are hosting a cyber-panel of festival authors who respond to the question, “What Keeps Me Writing?” I have posted my response to their question on my Red Room author blog.

Anthony Doerr and I will be reading our essays from the forthcoming anthology, The Book of Dads: Essays on the Perils, Joys, and Humiliations of Fatherhood on May 6th at the University of Idaho. The event is sponsored by the UI Campus Bookstore, and will be free and open to the public. Editor Ben George will introduce the book and the readings. Check back for details and updates.