Hawthorne Books

From Ploughshares: We’re excited to announce the publication of a new Ploughshares Solo: “A Warm Breath” by Scott Nadelson.  The Ploughshares Solos series allows us to publish long essays and stories in a digital format.

In this darkly humorous essay, Nadelson describes his grief after the premature death of a close friend. Every moment of wonder he experiences—from caring for his infant daughter to taking in a neighborhood stray cat—starts to feel like a betrayal. Nadelson looks...Forward

Here’s your chance to buy Scott Nadelson’s entire autographed short story collection for $10.00 each.

Scott’s debut collection, Saving Stanley: The Brickman Stories won numerous awards; 2004 H.L. Davis Award for Short Fiction Oregon Book Awards; 2005 New Writers Award; Great Lakes Colleges Association; and 10 Best Books of 2004 The Oregonian. David Shields said, “These extremely well-written and elegantly wrought stories are rigorous, nuanced explorations of emotional and cultural...Forward

Go on over to Other People and give this a listen, and you can also subscribe to the show.

Author Spotlight: Scott Nadelson on Writing the Memoir

Miami Book Radio Most writers find it hard to write about themselves so openly and honestly as you’ve done with The Next Scott Nadelson.

Scott NadelsonBefore writing the book, I always thought it would be difficult, too. But strangely, I found it exhilarating, especially when I wasn’t thinking about it as a book that other people would read but just as something I was messing with for my own pleasure. Being as open and honest as...Forward

Diane Prokop covers the Scott Nadelson and Jay Ponteri’s Love Will Tear Us Apart Book Tour at Powell’s to launch their memoirs, The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress and Wedlocked, respectively.

The audience got a double dose of soul-bearing, and painfully honest portrayals of lives in transition, of guys on journeys through the darker points in their lives, and of frankly what would be really embarrassing revelations for most of us. But for a memoirist, it is de rigueur, and Scott and...Forward

Scott NadelsonHow could you do this to me?

Scott NadelsonI’m sorry.

Scott NadelsonI thought we had a deal.

Scott NadelsonI know, I know.

Scott NadelsonYou were supposed to go on writing your little stories about everyday woe in the New Jersey suburbs, and I was going to enjoy my obscurity here in Oregon.

Scott NadelsonThat was always my intention.

To read the entire Scott Nadelson Self Interview, go to The Nervous Breakdown.

Hawthorne always appreciates Alison Hallett’s reviews because while she may not always share our enthusiasm for each book, she discusses aspects such as style, narrative arc, and construction. Here is an excerpt from her review of Scott Nadelson’s The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress:

“It’s unusual to read a memoir built of short stories, but it works—instead of forcing a narrative arc onto his own life, as so many memoir writers do, Nadelson simply places these stories next to one...Forward

But even in his most pitiful moments, Nadelson’s readers can’t help but look through their fingers at him, not in disgust or bewilderment, but in solidarity.

Nadelson’s darkest moments repeatedly coincide with self-discovery and growth, reminding anyone who has been miserable that it’s never all for naught. But the gravity of it all is balanced out by the humor that often goes hand-in-hand with the kind of rawness and self-deprecation Nadelson injects into his work.

More than once,...Forward

My fiancée left me for a drag king named Donny Manicotti.

That sounds like the start of a joke, but it’s not. It’s my life.

I do find it funny now – from a distance of some years and happily married – and even at the time I recognized how ridiculous the situation was, though mostly I was bewildered and devastated. I’d always prided myself on being someone who appreciated the absurdity of life, who didn’t take it too seriously, but there’s an enormous difference, I discovered,...Forward

One of the strengths of memoir as a form of writing is its ability to dramatize and articulate a narrator’s struggle to account for self-becoming: how did I get from there to here where I’m writing from? Scott Nadelson personifies this strength in The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress, through his self-aware character, the younger Scott Nadelson, who anticipates his later self’s backward-looking narration even as he faces the pain of his immediate suffering.

But ultimately it isn’t what...Forward

Identity and Fear: Talking with Scott Nadelson about The Next Scott Nadelson

Sally McPherson interviews Scott Nadelson for PW Book Lovers:

Sally McPhersonAs you were revising passages in your book, did you ever think “I need to be more honest, more revealing, about this”? Or did you think, “That’s too painful or private to reveal; I need to rein it in”?

Scott NadelsonWhen I committed myself to writing a book in which I was the main character—after debating for a while whether I...Forward

ForewordMemoir can be a tricky genre in terms of quality. Talk about why you believe in it and also about your selection criteria/method.

RhondaI often find myself at parties defending memoir. At a Christmas Eve party, I gave one of my friends Jay Ponteri’s upcoming book, Wedlocked, which is about a married man with a young son who falls in love with his local barista. I published this book firstly because it is well written and because it poses questions regarding monogamy and marriage and...Forward

Enter the Love Will Tear Us Apart Contest Part Two

Do you have a remedy for surviving Heartbreak? Want a free copy of The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress along with an official one-of-a-kind Hawthorne coffee mug?

All you have to do is go to Scott’s guest blog here, scroll to the bottom (after reading!) and post your remedy for getting over heartbreak. We’ll chose the best five of the bunch!

The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress is about Scott’s heartbreak after his...Forward

Enter the Love Will Tear Us Apart Contest

Have your own break-up story? Want a free copy of The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress along with an official one-of-a-kind Hawthorne coffee mug?

All you have to do is go to Scott’s guest blog here, scroll to the bottom (after reading!) and post your own story of woe. We’ll chose the best five of the bunch!

Just so you know what you’re up against, The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress is about Scott’s heartbreak after his fiancée left...Forward

Favorite line from a book:

From Flannery O’Connor’s story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”: “‘She would of been a good woman,’ The Misfit said, ‘if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.’ “

To read the entire article, go here.

Pinch Contributor Scott Nadelson has a new memoir out, and it’s great.

Scott Nadelson‘s “Scavengers” appeared in our Spring 2012 (32.1) issue (buy it here), and now that piece makes its excellent reappearance in his new collection, The Next Scott Nadelson. The work is concerned with excavating two years of Nadelson’s life—time spent the way humans always spend it, wanting and losing and getting back up again. It’s a worthy read by a guy we’re pleased to know. Better still,...Forward

Nadelson says he didn’t set out to write a memoir. But after beginning with a nugget of his autobiography, he found himself sticking closely to his own experiences.

“What I found while doing so was a sort of giddy nervousness that emerged from the process, as if I were shouting secrets from a rooftop,” Nadelson says. “I ended up laughing a lot as I wrote, which was a new experience for me.”

Nadelson describes his book as an investigation of identity, adding that he probably...Forward

Willamette prof has new memoir: The Next Scott Nadelson

Scott Nadelson, who holds Willamette University’s Hallie Ford Chair in Writing, has a new collection of autobiographical essays: The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress.

It starts in the summer of 2004, when his life seemed to fall apart. Over the next two years, he’d struggle to get back on his feet. In these essays, he re-examines his past to understand his present circumstances.

Read Barbara Curtin’s entire blog.

Over two hundred people have entered to win copies of Scott Nadelson’s memoir on shelves next month The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress on Goodreads! Maybe you will be one of them?

Can’t wait to read The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress? Here’s a new essay to tide you over. “On Dennis Oppenheim”, by Scott Nadelson in the New England Review.

In the latest issue of Camera Obscura Journal, Shane Oshetski interviews Hawthorne author Scott Nadelson regarding his story “Backfill” (which appears in the collection Aftermath) and the work of writing stories.