Aaron Hamburger

Beginning May 16th with a reading at the Drunken! Careening! Writers! series at legendary KGB Bar in New York City, I’ll be traveling around the country, doing readings, signings, panels, and workshops in support of Nirvana Is Here. Check out this schedule to see if I’m coming to your hometown.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how writers portray characters who come from a different life experience. Working on my new novel Nirvana Is Here, I found there were a few key questions to ask that proved helpful. You can read more about this in this piece I wrote for Medium. In a nutshell, to quote the writer Breena Clarke, the key here is what she calls “radical empathy.”

My story “Refugees” has been nominated by the editors of the Bennington Review for a Pushcart Prize! I’m thrilled and grateful for this recognition.

I’m thrilled to announce that my novel Nirvana is Here has been acquired by Three Rooms Press! It’s slated to be published in 2019. A brief description is below.

Have you ever looked up an old crush online to see where they are now? As his marriage to another man is falling apart, renowned Medieval Historian Ari Silverman arranges a meeting on Valentine’s Day to reconnect with the young man of his high school dreams, now married to a woman and the CEO of a popular dating site. Along the way, he recalls their relationship during the grunge-era 90s, and comes to some fateful decisions about his life in the present. Nirvana is Here touches on issues of identity, race, the #metoo movement, and family with poignancy and humor, combining the sensuality and haunting nostalgia of Andre Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name with the edge of the songwriting of Kurt Cobain.

John Patrick Bishop interviewed me recently for his Debut Writer Blog, and we had a great conversation about getting started as a writer and some of the formative experiences and lessons I’ve learned during my journey. One sample: “If you as a writer can guess where your story is going to go, then the reader can probably also guess, so you have to keep kind of surprising yourself.” Check out the interview here!

My short story “Refugees,” coming out in the new issue of Bennington Review, is about a family grappling with the advent of the Trump era. In this piece, I’m attempting to portray how the political and the personal intersect, an ongoing project in my work. These days, it seems almost impossible to ignore what’s happening in the news. As artists, how do we capture this unique cultural moment in ways that have lasting impact on future readers who have their own concerns? I believe the answer is not to hide from topical references, but rather to intertwine them with character, to find the nuance that is so often lacking in the public discourse.

My nonfiction essay “Sweetness Mattered” is now available online at the Tin House website. In some ways it’s my contribution to the #metoo movement, but in others, it’s a meditation on love, redemption, and how we’re all entitled to a bit of sweetness in our lives, even in the darkest times.

I’m currently working on a project set in the early 1920s in Cuba. I’m not a historical novelist and it’s a bit daunting to embark on something set in another time and place. However, at a reading by noted historical novelist Dolen Perkins-Valdez, I heard some advice that’s proven helpful. Perkins-Valdez, who meticulously researches her novels, said that she writes a draft of her story before doing much of the research, to figure out what she needs to know. Then she dives into the libraries, archives, etc. I found this very freeing, allowing me to plow forward, knowing that I can go back later to find out what I’ve gotten wrong. I also find that as I research elements of my story, it suggests plot possibilities that help get me unstuck when I reach a narrative dead end.

I’m currently working on a critical essay about two contemporary literary novels, both of which tackle sexual subject matter, yet in ways that feel decidedly unsexy. Yes, there’s a difference between literature and pornography (which I define as sex without characterization, bodies in motion without souls or psychology in operation). And yet, as Steve Almond argues in his classic essay on writing about sex, on some level, one point of a sex scene is indeed arousal: “the intent of any effective scene is to evoke in the reader the feeling state of your characters, including the aroused states.” That said, so many works of literary fiction leave out the sex or else, like the recent story “Cat Person,” published in the New Yorker and which caused a mini-stir because of its frank depiction of a one-night stand gone bad, show sex as unsatisfying. Why? Maybe in part, it’s a function of Leo Tolstoy’s famous opening to Anna Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” As writers, we often find the downsides of life more interesting and dramatic to explore. Happiness, joy, and yes ecstasy are more challenging to make interesting.

I’ve recently received galleys and edits for two new pieces coming out next year, and I’m reminded of how much I love working with smart editors, how they challenge me to dig deeper than I might otherwise have done. Writing is such a solitary activity for most of the time, that it feels incredibly gratifying to have someone on your side helping to bring your vision to fruition. It’s funny too, how the final stages of the editing process teach you the most arcane information, like how many candies are in a roll of Smarties, or the current condition of the Windsor, Ontario train station!