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Not my manuscript, but our book: a little Zen on the happy miracle of collaborative creation
Having delivered my manuscript to a publisher and having experienced in 2010 the transformation from “my manuscript” to “our book,” and having now delivered a second manuscript to the hands of a very different publisher, I am even more amazed and saddened now when I hear about an author losing perspective on the power of…
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Missouri Writers Guild interview
In anticipation of the Missouri Writers Guild meeting in April 2013, Margo Dill of the guild has created and posted an interview with me. I’ll be delivering a talk called “How to Parse a Press.” Here’s a sample from Margo’s interview: MWG: Welcome, Steve, thank you for talking with us today about what you are…
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Kind words already: praise for Some Kinds of Love: Stories
“The language is totally unlike anything used by myself or any other writer of Ozarks fiction. Is it possible that Niangua will become your Stay More? Your ‘new’ style is magic realism at its best.” —Donald Harington, author of The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks, The Choiring of the Trees, Enduring, and many others “In…
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Working with my better angels: on the value of publishing with a university press
For University Press Week, November 11-17 This week, November 11-17, is University Press Week, a seven-day celebration of what university presses are, what they do, and what great value they add to their communities, those scholarly, state, and regional consumers of content. I have an acute sense of why we need a week to heighten…
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Originally posted on Fiction and History: from Elder Mountain: A Journal of Ozarks Studies I swear, Yates introduces characters so genuinely and fully, you’re stunned to discover they weren’t figures borrowed from history…. Yates can set a scene with the best of them, and capture the broad vistas of battle as ably as he evokes the…
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Howard Bahr and Steve Yates discuss civilians in the Civil War and the writing of “historical” novels
Howard Bahr and Steve Yates discuss civilians in the Civil War and “historical” novels at Lorelei Books from Steven B Yates on Vimeo.
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Howard Bahr and Steve Yates discuss civilians in the Civil War at Lorelei Books, Vicksburg
Saturday, June 9, from 5-6 p.m. Vicksburg, Mississippi, is certainly a fitting spot to discuss civilians in the American Civil War. Vicksburg’s citizens, trapped by the battle, were subjected to the most fierce bombardment in warfare up to that date. Even civilians in Sebastopol in the Crimean War were not so thoroughly pounded. I’m honored…
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Eleven mistakes of the writer to a producer OR how I blew my chance to be on The History Channel
I write this as quickly as I can both to remember it all, and because I think it’s funny. A well-meaning and very talented writer, Steve Wiegenstein, who wrote the new novel Slant of Light, suggested my name to a producer for a company that makes shows at the History Channel. She was scouting for…
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Place Horse Syndrome: Finalist Again? The Oddities of Short Story Collection Contests
Finalist for the 8th Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction, 2012 Finalist for the 2011 St. Lawrence Book Award Finalist for the 2011 Flannery O’Connor Book Award Finalist for the 2009 Bread Loaf Bakeless Literary Prize Finalist for the 2009 Iowa Prize in Fiction That’s the list of finalist-lists that my collection, Some Kinds of Love:…
Fiction and History 