All-star lineup

This week The Writer staff is finishing first edits on our August articles, and that issue features an unusually strong lineup of author interviews we think you’ll enjoy. Look for our conversations with Alan Ball, the Oscar-winning screenwriter (for American Beauty) and creator of the HBO series True Blood and Six Feet Under; novelist Dorothy Allison, author of the bestsellers Bastard Out of Carolina and Cavedweller; and Lan Samantha Chang, director of the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

 Here are a couple snippets …

 Alan Ball: “In a way, Six Feet Under was like therapy for me. It was my way of making peace with grief because I've lost a lot of people in my life. Now it's still incredibly painful, but there's not that panic that I used to have. Now I know grief is a part of life and it's necessary. It's the price of love. And we will lose everything, eventually--including ourselves.”

 Dorothy Allison, on her escape from a difficult childhood: “I love books. Books are where you can go. In books, justice happens. In books, the despised are also the wonderful. Books were my salvation, my validation; it is where I wanted to live. I wanted to live between the pages of books and I did.”

 Find the full interviews in early July, when our August issue is sent out.

-- Ron Kovach, senior editor, The Writer

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