We’re always pleased at the magazine to hear
about good things happening to our contributors. Earlier this month, one of our
frequent contributors, novelist William Kowalski (pictured below), got the kind of rave writers
dream about. Writing in the British national newspaper The Guardian, author Tom Cox
paid tribute to Bill’s 2000 novel, Eddie’s Bastard, in an appraisal headlined:
Overlooked
classics of American literature: Eddie's Bastard by William Kowalski
A warm-hearted saga that reads like the beginning of a career to
rival John Irving's has been left unaccountably unloved
Cox begins his look back this way:
“Plenty of people write novels at the age of 28 – zeitgeisty novels, slight
novels, novels locked in place by their precocious youth – but few write one
with the scope and maturity of Eddie's Bastard by William Kowalski. Two years shy of his 30th birthday … Kowalski, a creative-writing-degree dropout-turned teacher, gave us a debut which, while ostensibly a
coming-of-age tale, takes in a sprawling family history going back from the
1980s to the American Civil War and beyond: a novel that in its rambling good
nature and uncanny debutante's assurance, is as surprising, familial and
immediately engaging as Kate Atkinson's Behind the Scenes at a Museum ... "
Find
the entire article here. As it turns out, Bill, an American living in Nova Scotia with his family, has
written the lead article for The Writer's February issue, headlined (tentatively):
10 questions for the new novelist:
Think you’re alone in having nagging doubts about your self, your
talent and your story? Think again.
Look
for that issue, and Bill's hard-won advice, in early January.
-- Ron Kovach, senior editor, The Writer