Episode 7: Patrick Somerville and Kyle Beachy

We are pleased to bring you the premiere of Breakfast With the Author Episode 7, with special guests Patrick Somerville and Kyle Beachy! Kyle Beachy is an assistant professor at Roosevelt University where he teaches fiction writing, and his St. Louis-set novel The Slide (Dial Press 2009) garnered critical praise nationwide. Just before the release of his hotly-anticipated new novel This Bright River (Little Brown, 2012), Patrick Somerville joined us as well. Somerville is the author of Trouble, The Cradle, and The Universe In Miniature in Miniature and he teaches creative writing at Warren Wilson College and Northwestern University.

Episode 6: James Tadd Adcox and Rebekah Silverman

We are pleased to bring you the premiere of Breakfast With the Author Episode 6, with special guests James Tadd Adcox and Rebekah Silverman! James Tadd and Rebekah are co-founders of Artifice Magazine. This episode was filmed last year and (as many in our audience may already know) since then Rebekah has gone on to a different project with Growing Home, a Chicago-based nonprofit where she is an Associate Director. Nevertheless, James Tadd and Rebekah are two steady fixtures in indie Chicago literature and the two of them made for one of the most fun breakfasts yet.

Author Spotlight: Lawrence Santoro

Lawrence Santoro is the author of the novel-like story collection, Just North of Nowhere (2007) and the recently-released collection Drink For the Thirst to Come (2011). In addition to numerous anthologized short fiction, he is also an acclaimed voice narrator, most recently working with Hugo Award-winning podcast StarShipSofa. His audio adaptations of his own story "God Screamed and Screamed, Then I Ate Him", and Gene Wolfe's "The Tree is My Hat" each garnered him nominations for a Bram Stoker Award in 2000 and 2003 respectively, alongside such... ahem... relatively obscure authors as Stephen King and Joyce Carol Oates.

I could go on like this about Larry, I really could, and name drop all day while tabulating his storied past as a writer and stage director, but that wouldn't leave you with a sense of just what a generally affable and gregarious fellow he is. He and his wife Tycelia are regulars out and about at reading events all over the city, and if you get a beer or two in him he's likely to tell you the stories behind his stories, which are often as colorfully rich as the stories themselves, and full of the same regional flavor that makes his work stand out.

While I'm on the subject of his stories, as terrific as they are to read, you do yourself a disfavor if you don't catch him at a reading sometime. I've seen plenty of readings in the Chicago area and there are no shortage of outstanding performers and readers, but Larry's tone and presentation tends to evoke a rarely-seen style that I liken here imperfectly to 50's-style radio dramatizations. Characters have more than just inflection and tone, they have true voices, and affect cadence and rhythm with a level of proficiency and skill that tells of years of practice and a special sort of comfort that Larry has bringing them to life. It has an old-fashioned feel, in the very best sense of that term, and inasmuch as that sort of reading is largely lost to today's visually-steeped culture, I highly recommend you check it out if you have a chance.