Guest post by: Scott Nadelson

Author of Aftermath, Scott Nadelson appears at the Wordstock Festival on Saturday, October 8 at 1pm on the Wieden+Kennedy Stage and is leading the workshop In the Beginning: Crafting Compelling Story Openings on Saturday, October 8 at 3pm

What are you reading now?

Two neglected little gems I dug up in a used bookstore: Fifty Days of Solitude by Doris Grumbach and The Huge Season by Wright Morris.

Who is your favorite new author?

Well, he’s been around for a while, but he’s new to me: Geoff Dyer, whose range is incredible, from the gorgeous and elegiac But Beautiful to the outrageous and hilarious Out of Sheer Rage.

Which writers have most influenced you?

There are a ton, but I always come back to Isaac Babel, Ivan Turgenev, Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, William Maxwell, Leonard Michaels, Paula Fox, Peter Taylor, Mavis Gallant.

What are you working on now?

I just finished my first nonfiction project, a literary self-portrait in personal essays called The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress, which will be published by Hawthorne Books next year. But I’m also always working on stories and have a few new ones drafted.

What is your favorite website for writing and literature?

I don’t spend a lot of time on websites, but lately I’ve been enjoying the book reviews on the Ploughshares blog—they’ve called my attention to titles I wouldn’t have come across otherwise.

What is your favorite children’s book?

I’ve got a one-year-old daughter, so I’m reading a lot of them lately. She’s partial to Hop on Pop, but my favorite is Goggles! by Jack Ezra Keats.

What is your favorite food?

Tapas: a little of this, a little of that.

Do you have a connection to Portland or the northwest? Do you live here or have you visited? If so, what is your favorite thing about it?

I’ve lived in Oregon for fifteen years now, almost as long as I’ve lived anywhere. I’m a New Jersey transplant who happily took root—it would take a pretty big tractor to dig me out now.

For more info about Scott Nadelson, take a look at his website, here.