Stephen Anable

Stephen H. Anable was born in Boston and graduated from Stanford and Harvard universities. His short fiction and essays have been published in magazines and anthologies. At various times during his life, he has been a stand-up comic, a journalist, an actor, a social worker, a scriptwriter, and the communication coordinator at a cemetery.

His new novel is A Pinchbeck Bride.

Last month I asked him what he was reading. His reply:

Right now I’m reading The Wives of Henry VIII by Antonia Fraser. I had never known Henry VIII was basically a crowned serial killer who’d executed his wife Anne Boleyn on what he knew were trumped-up charges (I’d always thought she’d done something to tick him off…). I enjoyed Fraser’s classic biography, Mary Queen of Scots, so thought I’d give this a try. I like history from a remote period because it has nothing to do with (my) writing.

And, since you asked, I’m actually tackling re-reading Ulysses for the first time since college, when I crept gingerly through it while taking a course on James Joyce. I’m just loving it!—the whole detail of life on a warm spring day in Edwardian Dublin: the pubs, Trinity College, Mr. Bloom enjoying his fried liver, his wife thinking salacious thoughts. I picked this up because I needed a jolt of rich language, the reading equivalent of Black Forest cake.

Whenever I’m working on something and feel the need for stylistic inspiration, I read something luscious: Nabokov, Anne Sexton, Iris Murdoch, Ruth Rendell.

Visit Stephen Anable's website.

--Marshal Zeringue