By Romey J. Romagnoli ’15
Walk into a local bookstore and you’ll find Siena College Assistant Professor of English Karin Lin-Greenberg’s book “Faulty Predictions” on the shelf. This collection of short stories won critical acclaim last year, receiving the prestigious Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction from the University of Georgia Press, which published the book. Since 1983, the O’Connor Award has been given each year to gifted and emerging writers with the goal of bringing their work to a national readership.
Lin-Greenberg spoke recently about receiving the O’Connor award, read stories from her book to the Siena College community and discussed what inspires her to write.
“People ask me, ‘Where do your stories come from?’ They come from many places, but often they are sparked by something I hear or see on the news, the radio, or TV,” Lin-Greenberg said.
“Faulty Predictions,” is a compilation of 10 short stories in which young characters try to navigate the world and older characters wrestle with regrets. They are set in various locations and are about people from different ages and cultures.
The first story Lin-Greenberg shared at Siena was based on a report from the Philadelphia Inquirer. Titled “Bread,” the piece is about a vigilante bread basher who is caught squeezing slightly-aged loaves of bread to prevent their sale. Lin-Greenberg also shared the more somber “Designated Driver.” The story is about a bus driver who has adopted a pig that is brought onto the bus by college students.
“[Professor Lin-Greenberg] offers a fresh take on familiar tensions in American literature: between urban cosmopolitanism and small-town provincialism; between insiders and outsiders; generational conflicts within families; and evolving definitions of kinship and community in an increasingly multicultural world,” said Keith Wilhite, Ph.D., assistant professor of English. “She has an agile voice and a keen eye for detail. We are lucky to have Karin on our faculty.”
Lin-Greenberg also shared some advice for aspiring authors. “Don’t worry about getting published or spend too much time perfecting language in your first draft,” she said. “Concentrate on getting the story down. And write what you want to read.”
Click here to learn more about studying English at Siena College.
