I first met Radu Codrescu (name changed for privacy reasons) in 2001 in Redmond, Washington, soon after I started my software developer job at Microsoft. Radu also worked for Microsoft, but we didn’t meet there. Some friends introduced us down an aisle at a grocery store. Radu was tall and athletic, a middle-aged man with graying hair…
Author: Roxana Arama
Muhammad and the Universe
A dozen surprising things gathered from Lesley Hazleton’s book The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad and Discovery Channel’s documentary How the Universe Works.
Simple Thoughts on History and Water
At the edge of the ocean, I think I’m safe as I watch death shimmering before me. The ocean is not death; it’s life, the primordial soup of life. But it would be my death, a few dozen meters out in the open waters.
Fact or Fiction? Part 4 (Dennis R. MacDonald)
The Homeric Epics (8th century BCE) and the Gospel of Mark (70 CE) A few months ago I was researching Homer and the Odyssey when I came across the title of a book that I had to check out: Dennis R. MacDonald’s The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark.
Fact or Fiction? Part 3 (Dan Brown)
Bringing fiction to life with Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code Something marvelous happened in 2003: the plot of a 15-year old novel became reality. In 1988, Umberto Eco published Foucault’s Pendulum, in which three bored editors at a Milan publishing house—Jacopo Belbo, Casaubon, and Diotallevi—come up with the idea of a global conspiracy that would…
Fact or Fiction? Part 2 (Umberto Eco)
Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum and the rewriting of history Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco is one of my favorite novels. I read it first in high school, in Romanian, and then spent countless hours discussing it with my desk-mate and fellow-bookworm Iuliana. I read the novel again in English during my MFA program at…
Fact or Fiction? Part 1 (Jorge Luis Borges)
My one-month old baby doesn’t leave me much time to write, but she lets me read and reflect, at least once in a while. A few days ago I remembered some research I did during my MFA program regarding fiction writers whose work either altered the real world, or who toyed in their writing with…
Author Interview: Jack Remick on Turning History into Story, Part 2
“I don’t always know where I’ve been when I write.” – Jack Remick Blood is the story of ex-mercenary Hank Mitchell who is in prison for stealing women’s underwear. The real reason for being in jail though is because he wants out of the guerilla wars financed by his brother-in-law’s corporation and waged against indigenous…
Author Interview: Jack Remick on Turning History into Story, Part 1
“It’s really not worthwhile to write if you don’t write a myth.” – Jack Remick Jack Remick is a poet, short story writer, novelist and teacher. More than twenty years ago, he and Robert J. Ray started a writing practice group that still meets every Tuesday and Friday at 2:30 p.m. at Louisa’s Café in Seattle….
No Water, No Story
I learned from Robert J. Ray and Jack Remick that a strong novel requires a contended resource base. Something that everybody wants or needs. In my Late Iron Age story, it’s water. Some have it; some had it and lost it. Everybody needs it. Without it, there’s no story. With it, come civilization and the…