Historical Fiction: 2009: August 2008 Archives

We're happy to announce the addition of two authors with new historical novels about Cuba to Session 2 of our Seminar this January 15-18. Rachel Kushner's debut novel, Telex from Cuba, is a portrait of the American colonies in pre-Revolutionary Cuba and their collapse in the face of revolutionary change, partly inspired by the experiences of her mother's family, who lived in Oriente Province in the 1950s. It received the cover review in The New York Times Book Review and raves from Carolyn See in the Washington Post ("a pure treat from the cover to the very last page.") Kushner is a former editor at Grand Street and Bomb, a coeditor at Soft Targets, and has written for Artforum, The Believer, Fence, Cabinet, and Modern Painters, among other publications. (Also– the website for Telex, though Flash-heavy and therefore finicky, is an elegant confection of faded Cuban snapshots, snatches of text, a map, and a beautiful loop of piano music.

Chantel Acevedo's first novel, Love and Ghost Letters, is set in Cuba from 1938 to the 1960s, and chronicles the haunted relationship between a daughter and her exiled father. Of it, Oscar Hijuelos has written "Love and Ghost Letters is enchanting; a heartfelt story. It tells volumes about the intimate life and loves of a family in pre-Castro Cuba. Along the way, it captures beautifully the atmosphere and emotions of a time which both Cuban-Americans and many an American reader will find both reminiscent and fulfilling. A great debut." Acevedo is a professor of English at Auburn University, and has had fiction published in American Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, and Cimarron Review, among others.

To register for Session 2 of the 27th annual Key West Literary Seminar, Historical Fiction and The Search for Truth, click here.

If you attended the Seminar in January, you may remember Curt Richter, the Helsinki-based American photographer who seemed to be everywhere each night. He was in town through the generosity of The Studios of Key West, which made Richter their first ever artist-in-residence and hosted an exhibit at the Armory of his show, Faces and Stories: A Portrait of Southern Writers. In laudable Key West style, Richter managed to attend much of the Seminar and most of the parties while also working diligently each day on a new series of portraits.

In January 2009, we've just learned, Richter will return to TSKW to debut Still and All, the result of those Key West portrait sessions. The details are, as yet, hushed. However, you can see a few of the portraits here and rest assured that we'll be collaborating in some way with the good people at TSKW for this second Richter-go-round. I spoke with Richter on the phone the other day, and asked him where he got the idea for the title:

"Still and All" came to me while re-reading a Walker Percy novel this summer– The Moviegoer. The protagonist begins a sentence with that superfluous preface, which I hadn't heard anyone say for years. It's out of fashion now, an old dialect. As a title, it worked perfectly. Why? I don't know– I'm a moviegoer, I've always been a moviegoer, and these are still photographs. A lot of people begin a sentence with 'uhh...' or "like..." "Still and all" sounded a lot better.