your Thursday links of wonder!

• Bret Anthony Johnston interviews National Book Award finalist Aleksander Hemon. Can you imagine learning how to write in a language other than your native tongue, and then doing it so beautifully you are an NBA finalist? My favorite part of the interview is when Johnston asks what was the most difficult aspect of writing the novel. The answer: “Stringing the sentences together.” Amen to that, brother.
• Gregory Wolfe on Robert Clark’s new nonfiction book, and a look at how it has been reviewed and what that may mean about the way we read and understand books nowadays. About the Seattle Times review, Wolfe writes:
  “In her review, Gwinn rightly complains that Clark is not more widely appreciated and read.* His works of fiction and nonfiction, she notes, have been so diverse in subject and style that he hasn’t developed the kind of market niche that makes for a bankable author. Well, thank God for that. Robert Clark’s books contain what all those studies on the decline of reading claim that our culture is losing: sensitivity of perception, precise language, and the kind of rich interiority that evokes complex emotional responses to the human condition.”
• At the Teen Fiction Cafe, I whine about The Lull.
• The creators of Red: the Book celebrate its paperback launch with a book drive. This is great, very grass-roots. You can help get this wonderful book into the hands of readers and future writers for less than the cost of…three venti lattes.
• Early voting is on in Utah! But only through tomorrow! Get it done.

(*Totally agree. Start with In the Deep Midwinter. Or, if you are a memoir and history lover and possibly Catholic, My Grandfather’s House: A Genealogy of Doubt and Faith. Also it’s the second time in a week I’ve heard the “branding” discussion, with which many YA authors are well acquainted.)