The Author’s Edition When my novel Swell was published, I waited anxiously for copies to arrive. I was due in Oakland, California, to be the distributor Ingram’s featured author at the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association Conference. A couple hundred of copies of the book waited for me there, and I think I signed them…

I keep sporadically a list of left-handed actors I see on my TV. I say actors, though it may just be an attribute of the character. As lists go, it’s probably pretty banal. I resist Googling left-handed actors, though I imagine there are many such lists. It may well be that I have discovered absolutely…

Last year my collection of police reports Checked Out OK was published by Factory Hollow Press. I consider the book as something of a found poem, and I appreciate the condensed, highly charged narratives in the various items. I collected hundreds of the entries, concentrating on the absurd instances of nothing happening, things that were…

It was last April that I found a moose carcass in the woods. When I discovered it, I resolved to keep it a secret. But then, the moment I got home I called a friend and we went out to visit it. Fine, I figured. My friend was exactly the right guy to tell, and…

When I began teaching writing to engineers at the University I was assigned a shared office in a back room off of the Mastery Room. This is where electrical engineering students go to sit in modernist aluminum chairs and take an arduous test on rows of computers in the windowless basement room of a dour,…

I’ll be reading with the poets Lizzie Lenson (Theatre of the Cow) and Karen Skolfield (Frost in the Low Areas) this Sunday 3/9/14, 5 PM, at Flying Object in Hadley, MA. If you’re nearby, maybe you’ll come? http://flying-object.org/events/corwin-ericson-karen-skofield/

In Walden, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.” Those are the same tracks that rode right by the house I grew up in, two stops away from Walden Pond. That’s the line that goes from Boston to Fitchburg, just as it did in Thoreau’s era. Thoreau’s…

[Over the course of my month as writer-in-residence, I’ll be sharing artifacts that I’ve connected to fiction writing. I almost always start in one place and quickly veer off course. This is the first exhibit in the series.] Even as far as soap operas go, Dark Shadows is pretty awful. There are scenes where the…

Before going any further, I want to extend my thanks to Steve Himmer for inviting me to serve as the Necessary Fiction writer-in-residence for February. I’ve been looking forward to this! By way of introduction, my name is Richard Melo. It’s all right if you haven’t heard of me. I’m sure I would never have…

Poltergeist Most of us are dying for more tears, but not me. I live for the screams and shrieks. “Get away from my baby,” one cries, squeezing with the lights off. A few rounds pass through me and get lodged in the dresser. When I was alive, I took a slug in the lung that…

He dives out of the water on to a lilo: finds himself mounting Mrs Robinson. Her eyes are closed. Her lips ajar. In this shot, Mrs Robinson reminds me of a pietà. Benjamin reminds me of an airborne penguin, exiting the ocean, and landing on its breast. Her breasts, in this instance, as well as…

1. It took me a long time to appreciate Robert Bresson’s films. Not long, as in I had to see his films repeatedly before I was able to appreciate them. Rather, I watched a lot of other films and directors before I ever even came to Bresson. But this is just as well, for I…