Chris's Blog
An Interview With Bryan Ballinger
Bryan Ballinger graduated from the Columbus College of Art and Design in 1990 with a degree in Illustration. He also has a master’s degree in Writing for Children from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After moving to Seattle in 1991 and doing freelance work for companies such as Nintendo Power magazine, he started working at Microsoft as an illustrator. He was lead illustrator for the first version of the award-winning Encarta CD-ROM encyclopedia as well as the Explorapedia children’s encyclopedia series. Bryan was the 3D Design Lead for 5 years at Big Idea Productions, the producers of the VeggieTales children’s videos. Bryan is also a professor of Digital Media Arts at Huntington University in Indiana. Bryan does illustration for children’s books, websites, games, videos, ads, etc. He is also the co-author of The Great Cheese Squeeze, a children’s book he did with his buddy Keith Lango. He is also a husband and a father.
Making the Book - One Week Hiatus
I’m taking a week off from Making the Book to catch up on some other work, and to get back on track with my current writing project. In the meantime, why not check out the first episode of “You’ve Got to Read This”, a video series I did for my old Website, The Intersection.
Making the Book #002: Revelation (Video)
Making the Book is a Web video series where I read and discuss my written work. Each week, I look back at how the stories I’ve published came to be and offer advice based on my experience as an adjunct English instructor and a lifelong writer. This week, I’m reading and discussing “Revelation,” a short story first published as “Christbearer” in The Bradford ReView and later collected under its current title in Those Little Bastads.
“Revelation” is a story about what happens when a Jesus Christ is cloned from a blood sample found on the Shroud of Turin. Originally told from the point of view of an angry young atheist, it has since been revised so that it is now seen through the eyes of a devout Christian woman. In this week’s episode of Making the Book, I talk a little about why our choice of point-of-view characters is so important.
If you’ve read Those Little Bastads and would like to suggest which story I discuss next, .
Making the Book #001: Sam (Video)
Making the Book is a Web video series where I’ll read and discuss my written work. I’ll look back at how the stories I’ve published came to be and offer advice based on my experience as an adjunct English instructor and a lifelong writer. This week, I’m reading and discussing “Sam,” a short story first published in The Bradford ReView and later collected in Those Little Bastads.
Here’s an excerpt:
Sam hated everybody. Everybody sucked. They were all assholes. He hated each and every person on the face of the planet, including the millions he’d never even met. He hated everyone except for the redheaded girl that sat in front of him in Lit class.
He loved her.
If you’ve read Those Little Bastads and would like to suggest which story I discuss next, .
An Interview With Steven Cramer
Steven Cramer is the author of four books of poetry: The Eye that Desires to Look Upward (1987), The World Book (1992), Dialogue for the Left and Right Hand (1997), and Goodbye to the Orchard (2004), which was a Massachusetts Honor Book in Poetry for 2005, and won the Sheila Motton Award from the New England Poetry Club. He is the director of the Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And he is also a husband and a father of two.
