See you in San Antonio for AWP 2020

Great news arrived this week with the acceptance of a panel by the AWP conference committee. I’ll be moderating the panel “High Style and Misdemeanors: The Virtues and Vices of Elevated Prose,” with Anita Felicelli, Olga Zilberbourg, Lillian Howan and Aatif Rashid. Here’s the panel description:

The hallmarks of high style—elevated voice, obsession with the pictorial, self-consciousness, and poetic devices—are rooted in Flaubert and European realism. Can writers whose work concerns immigration and displacement embrace a stylistic approach that has historically been disengaged and apolitical? Authors of fiction that centers on immigration, intergenerational stories, and belonging read their work and discuss the intersection of elevated prose and socially and politically engaged work.

We’re looking forward to the discussion, sharing our thoughts on style, and reading from our work and work by our favorite prose stylists. Date and time TBA!

A New Anthology from Catapult

I’m thrilled to have an essay included in this new anthology from Catapult, A Map Is Only One Story: Twenty Writers on Immigration, Family, and the Meaning of Home, which includes selections from Catapult Magazine’s outstanding Migration series.

From the publisher: “In the first published anthology of writing from Catapult magazine, twenty writers share stories of migration, family, the search for home and belonging, and what it means to exist between languages and cultures.”

The anthology appears in February, 2020, but you can pre-order a copy, and learn more, here.

Out now: Nimrod International's new MENA-themed issue.

Nimrod’s Voices of the Middle East and North Africa is out now, and my story “The Levantines” is included. The story is set in Los Angeles in 1950, and is based on a period of my family’s history, when my paternal grandfather, who with my grandmother emigrated to New York early in the 20th century, retired from the Atlantic Avenue bakery he founded with his brothers and moved the family to southern California. In “The Levantines,” I’ve imagined what those first weeks were like, especially for the character of Sofia, who is based on my grandmother, and whose life was defined by a series of painful departures and dislocations.

The editors were kind enough to include a photograph taken outside my grandfather’s bakery in Brooklyin, taken by my father around 1946

You can purchase an issue here.

Forthcoming from Nimrod International

I’m thrilled and honored to have my story, “The Levantines,” forthcoming in Nimrod International Journal's Voices of the Middle East and North Africa, featuring writers currently living in this region, writers from the region currently living abroad, and writers of Middle Eastern and North African heritage. That last category is where I come in—my paternal grandparents immigrated to the US after they married in 1921. My grandfather, Muneer Alwan was born in Damascus in 1889, and my grandmother, Fausya Zemberekci Alwan, was born in then-Constantinople in 1906. As third generation and culturally mixed, I see the stories of my grandparents’ generation, the second generation of my parents, and my own, as a kind of larger story of what it feels like to carry that past history, even as it’s still informing identity. “The Levantines,” is the title story of my in-progress story collection. Nimrod’s special issue appears this spring.

Zemberekci family photographed in then-Constantinople, about 1919. My grandmother, at age 13, is pictured standing third from left.

The road to finishing

The task of completing a work of writing has always seemed to me a difficult one. It often resulted in dozens of in-progress works stacking up—all unrealized and incomplete. Discouraged and more than uneasy about so much unfinished work, in 2015 I began work on an essay that was eventually titled “Thoughts on Finishing.” Writing the piece was an exercise in teaching myself what the process means, and what it entails—the choices and emotional stance the writer takes that enables a writer to finish. And if there was indeed a process, or a thought pattern, what was it and how could I learn it?

Writing that essay, which you can read here at the Northwest Review of Books, was one of the best things I ever did for myself. By unpacking the process, and reading how others tackled the issue—writers whose books I admire and had learned from—I managed to demystify the process for myself. And importantly, I learned that the frustration, and limbo, of the middle stage is in itself a step toward finishing.

In the process of writing his novels, Michael Chabon says he reaches a point where the book seems like “an utter flop,” but experience gets him through the bad patches. “The lesson I’ve learned is that you do come out the other side with a clear understanding of what you’re doing.”

Experience is indeed the best teacher. But sometimes we need help. Once a draft is complete—a huge achievement in itself—the work may not yet be finished; it may be in need of more: perhaps better organization, more precise or vivid language, or a good polishing to clear out the extraneous words. If you’re a writer who’d like a keen eye on your WIP, I’ll be accepting work for editorial consultation between now and April. You’ll find all the details here

Lan Samantha Chang on first books

We are taught to believe that the publication of a book is the happy ending to a long journey of working and striving, but according to many new authors with whom I have spoken frequently during this process, publishing is only the beginning of the journey of learning to navigate the world as a public writer, which is the opposite of making art, and it requires learning to protect that inner self from which the art emerged in the first place.

—  Lan Samantha Chang, from “Writers, Protect Your Inner Life.”

Want to receive my newsletter?

If you do, see the subscription sign-up, located at the bottom of News, and add your email address to receive periodic news about my writing, and my WIP—a story collection that includes some of the works excerpted here. Newsletters will also include short takes on writing craft, discovered in my own work and the works I’ve learned from.

More reviews in for O. Henry Prize Stories 2018

Two recent write-ups for this year’s anthology appeared recently. Hannah Niemeier at The New Criterion says these stories “place the poetic qualities of the short story on full display.” Here’s a highlight:

Jo Lloyd’s “The Earth, Thy Great Exchequer, Ready Lies,” a rare work of historical fiction (for this collection, at least), satirizes a British mine owner in a triumph of dialect that would have made Jonathan Swift proud.

That’s a great distillation of a story I loved—for its dystopian texture, its Wolf Hall-like atmosphere, and as always, Jo Lloyd’s terrific and affecting prose. Read the review here.

And a second review, at Kirkus, observes “A strong collection of first-rate work without a false note. Essential for students of the form.”

LitStack covers the O. Henry selection

Thanks to LitStack and T.S. Tate for this lovely writeup of my story's development, "Persistence and the Writer’s Road: Lauren Alwan’s 'An Amount of Discretion.'” The piece details the story's development, from numerous drafts to selection for this year's O. Henry Prize Stories by Laura Furman. Here's an excerpt that quotes my process of sending out the story:

“Around 2015, a friend and I decided to encourage each other in sending out stories for publication: we allotted every Thursday to sending out work, but with one important rule. Each story we sent out had to be submitted to at least ten journals–no less–and we had to report to each other where we’d sent work. I’d already squandered a lot of opportunities at my top tier journals (by sending out the story before it was finished), so by the time we started our submission Thursdays, I had about five possibilities left. Those five or so publications declined the story, but when I checked my records, I saw I hadn’t yet sent it to my absolute favorite journal, The Southern Review.”

Read the piece here.

"An Amount of Discretion" awarded a 2018 O. Henry Prize

I'm thrilled to share the news that my story, "An Amount of Discretion," that appeared in The Southern Review (Winter 2017), has been selected by series editor Laura Furman for inclusion in the O. Henry Prize Stories 2018, due out from Anchor in September. I'm grateful to Emily Nemens, fiction editor at TSR for choosing the story from the slush pile, and whose care brought essential clarity and final polish. (Read Emily's fantastic news on her new post at The Paris Review here.)

And congrats to jury prizewinners, Jo Ann Beard, Marjorie Celona, and Youmna Chlala, selected by Fiona McFarlane, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Elizabeth Tallent.

An excerpt from "An Amount of Discretion" can be read on this blog, see below.