Friday, June 06, 2008

What is Joshua Clark reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Joshua Clark, author of Heart Like Water: Surviving Katrina and Life in its Disaster Zone, a 2007 finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award. He has edited such books as French Quarter Fiction, Southern Fried Divorce, and others, including most recently Louisiana: In Words. A past editor for SCAT Magazine, he contributes to many publications including The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Lonely Planet anthologies, Consumer Affairs, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald, Poets & Writers, Louisiana Literature, Time Out: New York, and he will represent Louisiana in the forthcoming anthology State by State.

Clark is the founder of Light of New Orleans Publishing.

He also runs the KARES writers relief fund and covered New Orleans in the hurricane's aftermath for Salon.com and National Public Radio.

One paragraph from his Writers Read entry:
I feel so guilty because I get asked by the National Book Critics Circle to contribute to their blog about my favorite new books and here I am re-reading the Odyssey. Just finished The Wonderful Wizard of Oz too. What a nearly perfect book! Incredible. And of course it's the Odyssey for children. I also recently read, for the first time, Life of Pi. Someone needs to write a fabulous long essay about the trinity that these three books form. The search for home in a strange land (or ocean) is only the tip of the iceberg. [read on]
The Page 99 Test: Heart Like Water.

Writers Read: Joshua Clark.

--Marshal Zeringue