Lost Weekend 6-Pack/2 Movies,2 Books,2 Drinks
ALL 'LIT' UP's inaugural edition of the LOST WEEKEND 6-PACK featured two Chicagoland authors, Ben Tanzer and Patricia Ann McNair, last week, so it is fitting the follow-up happens to feature Alan Heathcock, a Chicago native and the author of VOLT, last year's stunning and heavily lauded story collection published by Graywolf Press and a staple of year-end top-ten lists. I am a big fan of this breakout author and have had the privilege to correspond with him during his meteoric rise and the kind of whirlwind year of opportunities and accolades every writer dreams of. Tapping Alan for the 6-PACK was a dream of mine because I know how passionate he is about books and movies and because I was interested to see how the author of the haunting and brutal story The Staying Freight might round out the 6-pack beverage-wise. Alan ended up putting together a sixer I wouldn't mind partaking of myself this weekend. Enjoy - J. Goertel
Alan Heathcock
"We'll call it a weekend, but I'm a consumer with strong legs and have been known to kill a "weekend six pack" on a weekday. The movies would be something thoughtful and beautiful and poetic, like Malick's Tree of Life or Bergman's Winter Light, and then something thoughtful and exciting, something that'll get my hackles raised a bit, like Drive, There Will be Blood, something by Scorsese, or any movie where Hitchcock didn't try to be funny. The books would be something by Cormac McCarthy (for me, there's Cormac...and then all the rest), The Road, Blood Meridian, and Child of God being in regular rotation, and then maybe some poetry--just read It Is Daylight by Arda Collins, which totally blew me away. For drinks, I'd feed my brain cells with some sort of veggie/fruit/grass smoothie, and then I'd kill a few brain cells with a six pack of Miller High Life (I'm a simple man--don't hate me). In fact, this post has inspired me--anyone up for beer and Vertigo?"
Alan Heathcock’s fiction has been published in many of America’s top magazines and journals, including Zoetrope: All-Story, Kenyon Review,VQR, Five Chapters, Storyville, and The Harvard Review. His stories have won the National Magazine Award in fiction, and have been selected for inclusion in The Best American Mystery Stories anthology. VOLT, a collection of stories published by Graywolf Press, was a “Best Book 2011″ selection from numerous newspapers and magazines, including GQ, Publishers Weekly, Salon, the Chicago Tribune, and Cleveland Plain Dealer, was named as a New York Times Editors’ Choice, selected as a Barnes and Noble Best Book of the Month, as well as for inclusion in the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers series. Heathcock is a finalist for the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and is currently a Literature Fellow for the state of Idaho. A Native of Chicago, he teaches fiction writing at Boise State University. For more information, please feel free to visit alanheathcock.com.
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