Posts tagged “Dan Simon”
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Letter from the Editor: on Unstuck in Time and And So it Goes…
November 21, 2011
“It is hard to build a career by saying or writing nice things about people. And yet, not only was Kurt beloved, he can be credited for freeing American literature from some of the stiffness and formality that had always marked it previously. He made the province of American literature much less provincial.”
Tags: american literature, and so it goes, biography, charles shields, contemporary, Dan Simon, gregory sumner, kurt vonnegut, unstuck in time
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Why we’re publishing “There Are Things I Want You to Know About Stieg Larsson and Me”
March 1, 2011
The original title for Gabrielsson’s book, and the one used in France, Sweden, and Norway, where the book was released last month, is Millennium, Stieg and Me. “We considered that title,” says Seven Stories’ publicity director Ruth Weiner. “But we wanted it to reflect how much of the book is about them and their love story.” . . . As for the size of the first printing, says Seven Stories publisher Dan Simon, “We’ve done it before. But in these days it’s a lot. It’s not so different from Kurt Vonnegut’s Man Without a Country in size and intentions, a first-person nonfiction that’s not exactly a memoir. I’d be more nervous if it wasn’t such a good book. The focus is like a Greek tragedy, like the Oresteia, the laws of the state versus higher laws.”
Tags: articles, Dan Simon, eva gabrielsson, girl with the dragon tattoo, milennium trilogy, publishers weekly, ruth weiner, stieg larsson, stieg larsson fourth book, there are things i want you to know
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Publishers Weekly on Barry Gifford’s Sad Stories of the Death of Kings
October 15, 2010
When novelist, screenwriter, and poet Barry Gifford submitted a manuscript of 42 interlinked short stories to his longtime publisher, Dan Simon at Seven Stories, both Simon and the press’s publicist Ruth Weiner thought that their kids would enjoy it. Now Seven Stories is in the midst of readying Gifford’s Sad Stories of the Death of Kings for both children and adults. It will be the press’s first book to be released simultaneously, in paper over board for older teens and paperback original for adults, and it will feature two different pieces of cover art.
Although Gifford wrote the book for adults, he likes the idea of dual editions. “I thought, Why not? I’m happy to have this double-barreled publication,” he said. Not only was Gifford aware of Sherman Alexie’s successful transition to YA, but Simon asked him only to change one sentence. The new sentence ended up going into both editions. —From Publishers Weekly
Tags: articles, barry gifford, Dan Simon, fiction, publishers weekly, ruth weiner, sad stories of the death of kings, ya
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Seven Stories Press publisher Dan Simon interviewed by the Brooklyn Rail
May 21, 2010
Newly posted on ArtonAir.org, here’s Phong Bui’s 2009 interview with Seven Stories Press publisher Dan Simon, as described thus:
Phong Bui speaks with Dan Simon, the publisher of Seven Stories Press and a Rail managing and advisory board member. Simon discusses, through wanton analogies wild and exacting, the multiple trapeze acts that the publisher must perform, the need for a greater place for contemporary works in translation, the background behind Kurt Vonnegut’s remarkable meditative text A Man without a Country and other works from the tremendous output of Simon’s publishing house. Acts of political and literary bravery have defined Simon’s career, as is made plainly evident here (67 minutes).Click here to listen in either m3u format, or with RealPlayer.
Tags: audio, brooklyn rail, Dan Simon, interviews, man without a country
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Publishers Weekly on Racing While Black
February 11, 2010
Simon described the book [Racing While Black] as critical of NASCAR and said it examines the problems Miller faced building a stock car racing team with his father; his struggles securing corporate sponsorships despite his team’s successes and the inevitable problems dealing with bigoted fellow-drivers and fans in a traditionally all white sport.
… Simon said that the book even has “a surprise ending,” and said the book will provide a much-needed look at one of the few major American sports that seems closed to African Americans. “The Millers did a great deal for blacks in racing sports,” said Simon, “during years in which NASCAR itself wouldn’t let black drivers in and even sympathetic black executives at General Motors and other car companies who wanted to support the Miller team would have to do so clandestinely. After a few years the persistence of the Millers posed enough of a threat that you started to see black drivers integrating other teams.”
— Publishers WeeklyTags: andrew simon, articles, Dan Simon, leonard t miller, leonard w miller, publishers weekly, race, racing while black, sports
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Dreaming Up America: A Conversation With Russell Banks and Dan Simon
December 10, 2009
In honor of the new paperback release of Dreaming Up America, Russell Banks’s first work of nonfiction, we present, once again, this 2008 audio interview between Seven Stories Press publisher Dan Simon and author Russell Banks, on the subject of storytelling, on the activist mentality, and the invention and mythology of America.
Tags: Dan Simon, dreaming up america, history, interviews, russell banks, videos
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In These Times on Nelson Algren and Entrapment
June 11, 2009
Brian McLelland of In These Times on Entrapment and Other Writings:
. . . Editors Brooke Horvath and Dan Simon, of Seven Stories Press, are like the racetrack “stoopers” Algren wrote about in the story “Stoopers and Shoeboard Gazers.” Just as stoopers walk around the track, looking for winning tickets thrown out by mistake, Horvath and Simon have combed through Algren’s old papers, hoping to find unpublished gems. What they find, instead, is a written record that Algren’s talent persisted long after his desire to use it burned out.
For more from the article—and for some of our thoughts on it—take a look at the rest of this post.
Tags: brian mcclelland, brooke horvath, Dan Simon, entrapment, in these times, man with the golden arm, nelson algren, reviews
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Divergence Magazine on Entrapment, Dan Simon, and 100 years of the spirit of Nelson Algren
May 5, 2009
“Thanks for caring about Algren,” [Dan] Simon said before hanging up the phone… I don’t think it’s about wanting people to read Algren; it’s about needing them to. Read an Algren book. Then, walk around Skid Row and try to look away from those desolate eyes staring back; or, try to watch any war on TV and remain unaffected; just try to ignore that dope-sick junkie nodding on the corner. You won’t be able to. Because you won’t be disconnected from them; you’ll be one of them. —from Divergence
Tags: articles, california, cypress college, Dan Simon, divergence, entrapment, nelson algren, never come morning
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The LA Times on the legacy of Nelson Algren
April 28, 2009
Art Shay… took the most iconic shots of the author, black-and-whites of him playing poker or peering through barroom windows, pictures so gritty you can almost feel the dirt rise off the frame. These photos, as much as anything, are responsible for Algren’s image as “the poet of the Chicago slums,” yet they also cast him in amber: a midcentury figure, smoking a cigar, eyebrows raised behind round glasses, turning over another card. Sixty years after winning the first National Book Award, for his 1949 novel of addiction, “The Man With the Golden Arm,” Algren has become vestigial enough that discussions of a national celebration were scaled back after, as [executive director of the National Book Foundation Harold] Augenbraum notes in an e-mail, “we concluded that though his writing continued to resonate, the number of his readers and his currency among the general reading public had diminished.”
So what, exactly, is Algren’s legacy? That’s the question the Steppenwolf event means to raise. —David Ulin at the LA Times
Tags: art shay, articles, barry gifford, Dan Simon, david ulin, don delillo, man with the golden arm, nelson algren, nelson algren live, neon wilderness, never come morning, russell banks, steppenwolf
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Photos from Nelson Algren Live
April 16, 2009
Tags: barry gifford, chicago, Dan Simon, don delillo, entrapment, man with the golden arm, martha lavey, nelson algren, nelson algren live, readings, steppenwolf theatre, willem dafoe
“Dan Simon” Posts
- Nov 21, Letter from the Editor: on Unstuck in Time and And So it Goes…
- Mar 1, Why we’re publishing “There Are Things I Want You to Know About Stieg Larsson and Me”
- May 21, Seven Stories Press publisher Dan Simon interviewed by the Brooklyn Rail
- Feb 11, Publishers Weekly on Racing While Black
- Dec 10, Dreaming Up America: A Conversation With Russell Banks and Dan Simon
- Jun 11, In These Times on Nelson Algren and Entrapment
- May 5, Divergence Magazine on Entrapment, Dan Simon, and 100 years of the spirit of Nelson Algren
