Category Archives: 2015 Press: reviews / interviews / features

Locus Amoenus nominated for Dayton Literary Peace Prize

Locus Amoenus, 9/11 novel by Victoria N. Alexander, has been nominated for the 2016 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Since 2007, the DLPP has awarded $10,000 each year. Previous recipients include, Bob Shacochis for The Woman Who Lost Her Soul, Junot Díaz for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and Francine Prose for A Changed Man. The 2016 winner will be announced in September.

Locus Amoenus is now available as an audiobook, narrated by award-winning actor Ben Jorgensen, from Audible.com and iTunes. Continue reading →

VN Alexander Interviewed on Yale Radio with Brainard Carey

WYBCX The Art World Demystified, Hosted by Brainard Carey
YaleRadio
In this 45 min interview, VN Alexander’s talks with Brainard about why art  is so important to learning, about the little-known “artistic” evolutionary mechanisms (other than mutation/gradual selection) that help create new species, about what the term “intelligence” in “artificial intelligence” means, about the difference between computer algorithms and poetic thinking –and lots more.

Fine Lines reviewed in Nature, The New Yorker and Washington Post

Blackwell FineLines200My favorite novelist, Vladimir Nabokov, is also my favorite evolutionary theorist.  There is a fine line between art and science.  In this beautiful coffee-table book, edited by Stephen Blackwell and Kurt Johnson, I have an essay called, “Chance, Nature’s Practical Jokes and the ‘Non-utilitarian Delights’ of Insect Mimicry.”

Fine Lines: Vladimir Nabokov’s Scientific Art hit the bookstores this week.  So far it’s been favorably reviewed in The New Yorker and the Washington Post.

And in Nature:

Nature Fine Lines 531304a

PopMatters: Sean Miller interviews VN Alexander

popmattersArtificial intelligence is all the rage these days. Case in point: while I was watching football this past weekend, there were two television commercials in heavy circulation during the games that featured AI avatars—Siri and Watson—having life-like conversations with actors.

As you may know, I have a few opinions about the prospects and limitations of AI. Recently, I had an email chat with novelist and philosopher of science Victoria Alexander about AI, art, and chance. Alexander’s work focuses on the uses of chance in nature and in fiction and the changing conceptions of chance in science, religion, and art. What follows has been lightly edited for clarity. Continue reading →

Dunn Brothers Locus Amoenus Reading in Dallas

dunnbrosActivist/archivist Johny Genlock recorded my talk at Dunn Brothers Coffee in Dallas area on Nov 29  for his YouTube Channel.

“A Fictional account combining elements of our post 9/11 culture of conflicting realities and the plot of Shakespeare’s Hamlet; set in a small town environs of New York State. Locus Amoenus, a “safe place”, turns out to be anything but! Victoria Alexander gives us samples of the book while explaining the elements that went into the creative project.“

Outreach Group Reviews Locus Amoenus

truthoutreach
Locus Amoenus, a New Novel
9/11 as a Shakespearian Tragedy
Wayne Coste

The new novel by Victoria N. Alexander, Locus Amoenus, is a delight to read. It weaves an important modern-day tale while following the outline of William Shakespeare’s enduring tragedy, Hamlet. The Bard’s tale of Hamlet is a personal and community tragedy placed in a historical period in which the fight over the control of Hamlet’s native country ultimately leads to its subjugation to a foreign country. The characters woven into the Locus Amoenus story are no less tragic than Shakespeare’s, and the reader is left wondering just how the world of Alexander’s characters could have avoided being seduced into a current-day form of subjugation when the curtain comes down. Throughout her witty narrative, the author’s wry humor adds levity to her tale of today’s Hamlet. Continue reading →

Live interview on INN World Report with Tom Kiely

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Tom Kiely, INN World Report Radio

Dallas-born author, Victoria N. Alexander, Dallas Observer‘s “best locally-produced literary figure” will be talking with INN World Report’s Tom Kiely, about her new 9/11 political satire novel, Locus Amoenus, and her Austin appearance Nov 27 at Brave New Books

Live Interview 6:30PM CST
http://www.logosradionetwork.com/pm.cgi?action=show&temp=listen
Call in to speak on the air live at 512 646-1984

Locus Amoenus synopsis: In this dark comedy, a 9/11 widow and her son, Hamlet, have retreated from Brooklyn to the idyllic rural countryside upstate, where for nearly eight years they have run a sustainable farm. Unfortunately their outrageously obese neighbors, who prefer the starchy products of industrial agriculture, shun their elitist ways (recycling, eating healthy, reading). Hamlet, who is now 18, is beginning to suspect that something is rotten in the United States of America, when health, happiness and freedom are traded for cheap Walmart goods, Paxil, endless war, standard curriculum, and environmental degradation. He becomes very depressed when, on the very day of the 8th anniversary of his father’s death, his mother marries a horrid, boring bureaucrat named Claudius. Things get even more depressing for Hamlet when his friend Horatio, a conspiracy theorist, claims Claudius is a fraud. The deceptions, spying, corruption, will ultimately lead, as in Shakespeare’s play, to tragedy.

Radio program archived at: http://mp3.logosradionetwork.com/INN/64k/INN_Radio_2015-11-24_64k.mp3   start at 0:34:00

VN Alexander live on Goddard College / Community Radio at 9:00AM

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Today. Listen live Monday morning 9:00-10:30 AM ET. WGDR 91.3FM in Vermont. Jim Hogue will interview Victoria N. Alexander about her new post 9/11 political satire novel, Locus Amoenus.  Hogue’s program is called the House at Pooh Corner. Go to http://www.wgdr.org

Continue reading →