Reflections on Living, Writing, and Dying Well
By: Randall Silvis
ISBN-13: 979-8511161594
Publisher: Two Suns Books
Publication Date: 06/30/2021
Format: Kindle & Paperback
My Rating: 5 Stars ++
From the Mirror, Reflections on Living, Writing, and Dying Well is the first installment of what is to be a four-part autobiography of the critically acclaimed author Randall Silvis. Consisting of more than three hundred brief reflections and observations, none longer than a single typed page, this intimate and revealing collection is at turns humorous, informative, poetic, philosophical, and even angry as the author considers not just the art of creative writing but also the writing life, fatherhood, academia, politicians, introversion, the afterlife, solitude, romantic love, and nearly every other subject that has fallen under his scrutiny over the past fifty years. Silvis spares no victims, including himself, in this brutally honest consideration of his life and career, and of the failings and potential of the human species in general. A must-read for lovers of life, literature, and the pursuit of happiness.
About the Author
Randall Silvis is the multi-genre author of twenty critically acclaimed novels, story collections, and a book of creative nonfiction named a Best of the Year book by the Toronto Globe & Mail. He was the first Pennsylvanian to win the prestigious Drue Heinz Literature Prize (1984), and was chosen for that award by author Joyce Carol Oates. His work has been published in over a hundred editions in several languages.
Also a prize-winning playwright and produced screenwriter, Randall’s work has appeared on Best of the Year lists from the New York Times, the Toronto Globe & Mail, SfSite.com, Strand magazine, and the International Association of Crime Writers, and has been hailed as “masterful” not only by the New York Times Book Review but also by Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Mystery Scene magazine, and several other review sources. His two novels from 2017, (Two Days Gone and Only the Rain) were Amazon #1 Bestsellers in Psychological Suspense.
Silvis has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize for his short fiction, and was a two-time Hammett Prize finalist for literary excellence in the field of crime writing (for An Occasional Hell and Two Days Gone.) The recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowships, a Fulbright Senior Scholar Research Award, and six writing fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts for his fiction, drama, and screenwriting, he received a Distinguished Alumni Award from Clarion University of Pennsylvania in 1988, and in 2001 received the same honor from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. In 2007 IUP bestowed upon him an honorary Doctor of Letters degree for “a sustained record of distinguished literary achievement.”
