Thursday, November 20, 2008

What is Porter Shreve reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Porter Shreve, author of the recently released When the White House Was Ours.

One book mentioned in his entry:
Hunger by Lan Samantha Chang, who ... visited Purdue a couple weeks ago and gave a wonderful reading from a novella in progress. I'm amazed by the title novella in Hunger, told from the point of view of a mother looking back over the course of her whole life, from her mother's warnings about yuanfen, "that apportionment of love which is destined for you in this world," to her arrival in New York and mostly loveless marriage, to her raising of two very different daughters to her death and return at the end as a hungry ghost, still haunting the New York apartment where one of her daughters still lives. It's a moving, beautifully written story that uses the supernatural in surprising yet inevitable ways.[read on]
Porter Shreve's first novel, The Obituary Writer, was a 2000 New York Times Notable Book, a Book Sense pick, and a Borders Original Voices selection. His second novel, Drives Like a Dream, was a 2005 Chicago Tribune Book of the Year, a People "Great Reads" selection, and a Britannica Book of the Year. His third novel, When the White House Was Ours, was published by Mariner Houghton Mifflin in September.

Shreve currently directs the Creative Writing Program at Purdue University.

Learn more about Porter Shreve and his work at his website.

Writers Read: Porter Shreve.

--Marshal Zeringue