Monday, December 27, 2010

What is Brian Leung reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Brian Leung, author of Take Me Home.

His entry begins:
I think readers forget this, but in the first six months after a writer publishes their book, s/he is “reading” that novel. It becomes a very strange experience, a kind of practiced striptease duo. I suspect it’s not unlike a singer on concert tour. How many times has Lady Gaga sung “Bad Romance” in the past year? What do those lyrics mean to her now? What did they mean to her when she first sang them? I am currently asking myself these questions. But rather than discussing what I’m reading now, what if I mention the book everyone should be excited about in the Spring? I’ve got a little advance/inside info on it because I “blurbed” the book. It’s a collection of short stories by Adam McOmber, and it’s called This New and Poisonous Air (BOA Editions). The publisher is known for its poetry titles, but also comes out with just two fiction titles a year in a highly selective process. For readers tired of safe and /or conventional literary fiction, McOmber delivers an exceptional collection of short stories. Among these is a story that should make his career. It’s called “A Memory of His Rising,” and it’s the loveliest, strangest, most sincere...[read on]
Brian Leung is the author of the acclaimed story collection World Famous Love Acts, and the novel, Lost Me.

Among the early praise for Take Me Home:
Take Me Home is a riveting novel of two heroic people attempting to transcend the predjudices of their time and place.... Skillful artistry and empathy.”
—Ron Rash, author of Serena and One Foot in Eden

“Leung’s writing is exquisite, deceptively plain, deeply felt and spiritually high, with dead-on depictions of the world as it is.”
San Francisco Chronicle

“[A] lyrical sophomore novel ... Evocative ... Leung’s subtle, perceptive saga closes on notes both touching and patriotic.”
Publishers Weekly
Visit Brian Leung's website.

Writers Read: Brian Leung.

--Marshal Zeringue