Nora showing Dwight Allen how to use a computer

Nora Allen showing Dad how to use a computer

An eBook edition of my first novel, JUDGE, originally published by Algonquin in 2003, has been brought out by Dzanc, a small press in Michigan that publishes both new fiction and fiction that has recently gone out of print. (Among the writers whose books Dzanc has e-reprinted are Nadine Gordimer, T.C. Boyle, Ellen Gilchrist, Robert Coover, and Thomas Berger.) This summer, the Cambridge Book Review Press, in Wisconsin, published a story of mine called “The G.O.D. Club.” It is available as a Kindle eBook, and costs $2.99. Included with the story is an excerpt from an essay I wrote about my religious upbringing. Doug Moe, a longtime columnist for the Wisconsin State Journal, wrote an introduction, and Dale Kushner, the author of a splendid first novel called THE CONDITIONS OF LOVE and (full disclosure) a friend of many years, wrote an afterword.

Here are six books of fiction I recently read and loved: STILTSVILLE (2010), by Susanna Daniel; SEA CREATURES (2013), by Susanna Daniel; THE WOMAN UPSTAIRS (2013), by Claire Messud; THEY CAME LIKE SWALLOWS (1937), by William Maxwell; THE NAME OF THE WORLD (2000), by Denis Johnson; and THE AGE OF GRIEF (1987), by Jane Smiley. Each one of these books is beautifully made, and all of them are emotionally stirring. There is so much good writing out there, and then there is the good writing that cracks something open inside of you.

— Dwight Allen, Sept. 1, 2014