I didn't find out that Joe Hill is giving a reading at the South Portland Borders until after my review of his 20th Century Ghosts ran in the Phoenix a couple weeks ago. So I used the news as an excuse to provide you all with more coverage of this smart author. This afternoon, I did a short phone interview with Hill, who lives near Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Congratulations to Bostonian Sue Miller, this year's winner of the Kate Chopin Award, bestowed each year to an author who embraces the feminist themes of Chopin's best-known work, The Awakening.

When I wrote about Miller's 2008 novel, The Senator's Wife, in January, I spoke to her about the complicated feminism of one of the book's two main female characters, Delia.

Nina wrote this piece about Kelly Link's new book of short (YA?!) fiction, Pretty Monsters. (NMac's written about Link's stories before.)

I wrote this about Joe Hill's not-so-new book of short fiction, 20th Century Ghosts.

Both writers combine "real-life horrors...with others less real," as Nina puts it. Both are worth reading.