Robin McLean

Greg Martin and me at fabulous Collected Works in Santa Fe on Oct 25, 2022. Thanks to Greg, Dorothy, Cecile and all the wonderful Santa Fe gang...watch here.

 

They have lots of signed books and will ship! 

 

Thanks for supporting the indie bookstores that have supported the book tour! 

READ IT 

Join me at Rain Taxi's  Twin Cities Book Fest tomorrow Oct 15 at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. I'll be on the Fiction Showcase panel at 1:30 with Phong Nguyen (Bronz Drum)  and Akil Kumarasamy (Half Gods and Meet Us by the Roaring Sea) in the Fine Arts Building. Dress warmly. I'll be reading from the new collection and chatting with these wonderful writers and all in attendance.

 

Meanwhile, over in the UK, the paperback of Pity the Beast made a Must Read List by Jane Shilling in the Daily Mail Online. Nice!

 

The launch is coming! 

 

See you somewhere across the USA! 

 

 

Get'em Young made this list with a bunch of other wonderful books...

 

"These imaginative, poetic stories overflow with compassion and should seal McLean's flourishing reputation as a writer of great heft. "

 

Read the whole review.

Join Nevada Poet Shaun Griffin and me at the Nevada Humanities Lit Crawl on September 10 in Reno for our workshop called "Writing in Solitude."   (E.L. Cord Museum School Classroom #1, Nev Museum of Art, 160 W Liberty St, 1:30-2:15 pm).

or

 

Join me and (Nev Poet Laureate 2022) Gailmarie Pahmeier and (LV artist and activist) Brent Holmes for our panel called "What It Means to be Western." (Horan Pavilion at the Lake Mansion Arts and Cultural Center, 250 Court Street, 2:30-3:15 pm.)

 

 There will be lots of interesting stuff going on besides us...full Nevada Humanties Lit Crawl Schedule here.

 

Below is the beginning of a blog post I wrote for the Lit Crawl. It's up on the Nevada Humanities website now: 

 

I've always been a solo writer. Why? Read on…

 

It started long before I'd written anything, as a potter in rural Alaska. No lights through the forest, no road sound as I spun my pots—it changed my midwestern, very urban mind. 

 

See you there, tell Reno friends, and happy trails!

 

 

This just in from Publishers Weekly about the new collection: 

 

"McLean (Pity the Beast) offers up a gritty and well-honed collection of mischief, desperation, and disaster in the American West. ...With merciless prose and a bold vision, McLean continues to impress."

 

Get'em Young, Treat'em Tough, Tell'em Nothing comes out on October 18 in the US and UK.  Pre-order here.

 

Join us at the launch with the GrubStreet Debut Series in Boston (10.18.22).  all US and UK tour news is here.

 

--NYC, S. Hadley, Santa Fe, Dallas, Denver, Chicago, LA, Seattle, Reno, London...

also Minneapolis (Twin Cities Book Fest --

 

Read the kind comments about the stories here...

 

Pre-order the paperback of Pity the Beast here (with the Coetzee quote in the cover!)

 

Thanks for reading. Come back for more news soon.

The BOA folks asked me to write a blog post about what it has meant to me to have won the BOA Short Fiction Prize. I do whatever they ask of me over there, so here it is....

This is to encourage all other short fiction writers to submit to the 2017 prize, open submissions April 1 - to May 31. SO SUBMIT!

Thanks BOA, again and again.

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Well, Happy Day.

My story "House Full of Feasting" appears in the latest issue of CINCINNATI REVIEW.

Order issue 13.2 on the website, or subscribe -- even better.

Thanks so much Nicola Mason, Michael Griffith and all the CR team. I love this journal and am thrilled this is my second story to be published there. It's so cool to appear with so many great writers and one of my heroes -- Steve Almond.

Happy New Year!

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Thanks Nathan Goldman for the fantastic new REVIEW of Reptile House in KENYON REVIEW .

"...an approving comparison to Flannery O’Connor is warranted...Her prose is energetic and lyrical without excising ugliness... which it folds into its world with an elegance that astounds. This skill with language makes possible the stories’ portraits of human beings, so revealing in their unsentimental bleakness, and it is in this unique style that the worldhood of Reptile House emerges." -- READ ALL OF IT .

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