How to write a reliable unreliable narrator with bestselling author, Carol LaHines.

Writers, Ink: Your backstage pass to the world's most prolific authors

Join hosts J.D. Barker, Christine Daigle, Kevin Tumlinson, and Dick Wybrow as they discuss the week's entertainment news, including the Romance Writers of America filing for bankruptcy, Polis Books, and how Costco plans to stop selling books year round. Then, stick around for a chat with Carol LaHines!

Carol LaHines:

For me, the most affecting stories are those that are leavened with a sardonic sensibility. Italo Calvino, one of my favorite writers, notes “th[e] particular connection between melancholy and humor,” speaking of how great writing “foregrounds [with] tiny, luminous traces that counterpoint the dark catastrophe.” I've always veered toward the great literary comic writers—from Cervantes to Laurence Sterne to Pynchon, with a particular reverence for Nabokov, who believed that the best writing places the reader under a spell.

My debut novel, Someday Everything Will All Make Sense, was a finalist for the Nilsen Prize for a First Novel and an American Fiction Award. My second novel, The Vixen Amber Halloway, is forthcoming in 2024 (Regal House). My fiction has appeared in journals including Fence, Denver Quarterly, Hayden's Ferry Review, Cimarron Review, The Literary Review, The Laurel Review, South Dakota Review, North Dakota Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Chattahoochee Review, The Nebraska Review, North Atlantic Review, Sycamore Review, Permafrost, redivider, Literary Orphans, and Literal Latte. My story, “Papijack,” was selected by judge Patrick Ryan as the recipient of the Lamar York Prize for Fiction. My short stories and novellas have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and been finalists for the David Meyerson Fiction Prize, the Mary McCarthy Prize, the New Letters short story award, and the Disquiet Literary Prize, among others. My nonfiction includes “New York est une ville a part,” appearing in chantier d’ecriture (Mémoire d’encrier, A. Heminway, ed.). I am a graduate of New York University, Gallatin Division, and of St. John's University School of Law. My teachers include Rick Moody, Phil Schultz, and Sheila Kohler.

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