Authors

Last month the namesake of the literary journal McSweeney's passed away at 67-years-old.

In 1998, Dave Eggers named "Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern" after an man who had sent letters to his mother. Timothy McSweeney was an MFA art student and onetime studio art teacher at Rutgers University. The site described his work: "The canvases he leaves behind are filled with haunting and beautiful imagery. They are also filled with a palpable desire--to be heard, to connect, to be understood better by others and himself."

McSweeney suffered from mental illness, and was hospitalized for many years. There, he wrote letters to people around the country. He sent many letters with diagrams, train schedules and "urgent" messages to Eggers' mother--despite the fact that they had never met.

Here's more about the real McSweeney, from the website: "Knowing that the journal bore the name of a real person who had endured years of struggle threw melancholy shadows over the enterprise. But the McSweeneys insisted that the use of the name was acceptable, even appropriate, given Timothy's background as an artist and search for connection and meaning through the written word. Since 2000 we've implicitly dedicated all issues to the real Timothy."

"There's so much that happens in real life that we don't understand and we can't even fathom. I don't really see the point of making up crimes. The crime genre is the perfect tool to understand why crimes happen," explained our special author guest this morning.

Today's guest on the Morning Media Menu was David Peace, one of the most critically acclaimed mystery novelists in the world. He is the author of The Red Riding Quartet (about the Ripper murders in England), The Damned Utd (which was recently turned into a film), and Tokyo Year Zero. He was chosen as one of Granta's 2003 Best Young British Novelists and won the French Grand Prix de Roman Noir for Best Foreign Novel.

Press play on the embedded player below to listen. The show will be archived around the mediabistro.com network all morning.

He talked about adaptations of his novels and his new American release, Occupied City--a retelling of a mass murder in Japan. He also pondered his own place in the mystery genre. "I make no bones about it. To me the greatest mystery or crime writer of the last 25 years is James Ellroy. When I started out, his LA Quartet really raised the bar--in taking the history of Los Angeles and America and found a new purpose for the crime novel," he explained.

Peace concluded: "White Jazz pushed the boundaries you could tell a story, the pace of telling stories ... I'm always trying to write a book better than Mr. Ellroy. I've yet to do it. But that's my hope."

Congressman John P. Murtha passed away today, leaving behind a legacy of more than 30-years worth of legislative work and writings on national security.

The Pennsylvania State University Press published his 291-page work, From Vietnam to 9/11: On the Front Lines of National Security. In 2006, he wrote the forward to Presidents at War: From Truman to Bush, The Gathering of Military Powers To Our Commanders in Chief.

Here's more from his official obituary: "Murtha, 77, was Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. First elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in February of 1974, Murtha dedicated his life to serving his country both in the military and in the halls of Congress. A former Marine, he became the first Vietnam War combat Veteran elected to the U.S. Congress. This past Saturday, February 6, 2010, Murtha became Pennsylvania's longest serving Member of Congress."

Today's Author Pick of the Day is Michael Buckley, author of the hilarious new series of books called, N.E.R.D.S. (Abrams) I had been waiting for this book to come out for months and harrassed the publicist night and day to receive a review copy of it.

Buckley is already the author of the New York Times bestselling series and Today Show Al Roker Book Club pick, The Sisters Grimm. He has also written and developed shows for Nickelodeon, Disney, MTV Animation.

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On Good Morning America today, Jenny Sanford revealed she'd shown her husband drafts of memoir passages while writing her new book.

Sanford, you may recall, is the estranged wife of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. The memoir explores her husband's highly publicized affair with an Argentinian woman. Last week The Daily News ran exclusive excerpts from Sanford's memoir, "Staying True."

Here's an excerpt: "Sanford told Good Morning America that the governor has not yet read her new book, but that she showed him drafts of various passages as she wrote it. 'I think generally he's OK with it,' she said."

Political celebrities are hot in the publishing industry, following the blockbuster success of Game Change and Going Rogue.

At a standing-room only McNally Jackson Books event last night in New York City, National Book Award winner Colum McCann read an excerpt from his Granta 109 essay about his father's career as a newspaper editor.

As McCann read to the reverent audience, a documentary crew filmed the entire event--collecting footage for an Irish television documentary about the novelist. After the reading, GalleyCat caught up with the documentary director, Charlie McCarthy from Icebox Films.

The company also produced a documentary about the poet, Seamus Heaney. "We hope to finish by the end of spring, hopefully," he told GalleyCat. "It's about New York City and Colum--looking at the city through his eyes. We've been following him for ten days."

We also cut our own mini-documentary about the evening, as McCann explored his relationship with his father and talked about how he conceived the Granta essay.

Published by Delphinium, and distributed by Harper, Freshwater Boys, written by author, Adam Schuitema is an example of a book that can still succeed no matter the size of the imprint or publisher. Schuitema has received glowing reviews from such publications as Publishers Weekly.

In it, he has written a collection of eleven short stories set in and around the Great Lakes of Michigan, describing boys and men in struggles with both nature and themselves.

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The quest to uncover literary elite nicknames continues over at Gawker, where Doree Shafrir has collected nicknames of famous writers. Her updated list included nicknames for New York University professor (and GalleyCat interviewee) Lawrence Wechsler and the great J.D. Salinger.

Yesterday, we urged GalleyCat readers to visit this handy dandy Nickname Generator for inspiration--helping the next generation of literary elites pick nicknames that will work at poetry readings and wrestling matches.

Add your nickname in the comments. Here are some of the results: Erin Downing was tickled pink with her randomly generated nickname: "I'm 'Steamy Pink Fiend'--it's perfect." Nova Ren Suma ended up with a cosmic name: "Wow, I got 'The Galaxy.'" Finally, Gretchen Stelter picked two names: "My literary elite nickname: Maxi Circus Shadow (wha?) My superhero nickname: The Strangely Neutron (I hope that one sticks)."

Some many know of Richard Blakeley as an editor at Gawker but he is also the author of a new book called, This is Why You're Fat (HarperStudio). The book is disgusting, revolting, and repulsive -- in other words, I loved it.

We had the opportunity to interview the humorous author a few days ago about the new book.

For those who haven't read your book, what is it called, and what is it about?

This is Why You're Fat is a small paperback book, 6 x 6 inches, 140 pages and contains about 5 million calories worth of over the top

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As newspapers close foreign desks and overseas coverage diminishes, freelance correspondents will become more important--eventually writing the great books about about foreign affairs.

Today's guest on the Morning Media Menu was Paul Harris, a journalist who has covered conflicts in Sierra Leone for Reuters and the Associated Press. He talked about foreign reporting and his debut novel, The Secret Keeper--a novel "inspired by his experiences in Africa, [full of] love and hate, excitement and distress."

Press play on the embedded player below to listen. The show will be archived around the mediabistro.com network all morning.

Here's an excerpt: "My advice to anyone looking to get into foreign corresponding these days (where newspapers are cutting back) is--if you are young enough and you can scrape together enough cash, just do it. You'll regret not doing it, rather than doing it, even if it doesn't pay off. Take the risk and go for it."