California Literary Review

Digital Dickens: How Scott Sigler is changing the way we read: But what makes Sigler groundbreaking is that most of his novels have never appeared in print. They are broadcast via a small cubicle containing an Apple Macintosh and some recording equipment. That is pretty much all Sigler has needed to become the world’s most famous podcast author. [Independent]

Mormon who put new life into vampires: Teenagers across the world are anxiously awaiting the next instalment of author Stephenie Meyer’s vampiric series of novels. [Guardian]

Brutal beginnings: Writers of fiction like to say they ply their trade by telling lies, but Tobias Wolff really was a liar. He would not be where he is today if he hadn’t been. Terrorised by a violent stepfather, dependent for refuge on his floundering mother, he made up stories in order to survive. [Guardian]

LA Times to Fold Standalone Book Review: According to a former staffer, the Los Angeles Times is folding its standalone Sunday book review section, laying off two dedicated book editors. [Publishers Weekly]

Kay Ryan, Outsider With Sly Style, Named Poet Laureate: “I so didn’t want to be a poet,” Ms. Ryan, 62, said in a phone interview from her home in Fairfax, Calif. “I came from sort of a self-contained people who didn’t believe in public exposure, and public investigation of the heart was rather repugnant to me.” [NYT]

Kick over the Scenery: And it has happened to science fiction, where the anointed author is Philip K. Dick. When he died in 1982, Dick was a cult figure, admired unreservedly in the science fiction subculture, and in the American counterculture as a chronicler of psychedelia and fringe religion. [LRB]

‘It was a gift for my kids’: former hotel clerk tops best-seller lists: As a first-time author William P Young had no illusions about his book. A former hotel night clerk and odd-job man who was raised partly among a stone-age tribe in New Guinea, he had written it mostly as an exercise in self-therapy with little thought of publishing. If his children would read it, he’d be happy. [Independent]