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How to pronounce John Sayles: sails
Sayles' career as a storyteller began with writing fiction. His first novel was Pride of the Bimbos (1975), followed by Union Dues (1978, nominated for National Book Award and National Critics' Circle Award)). Los Gusanos (1990) came next and then short story collections The Anarchists' Convention (1979) and Dillinger in Hollywood (2004). The epic historical novel A Moment in the Sun is his most recent novel, published in 2011.
He has directed seventeen feature films, including Matewan, Lone Star, and Eight Men Out, and received a John Steinbeck Award, a John Cassavetes Award, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Writer's Guild of America, and two Academy Award nominations. His latest film, Amigo, came out in 2010.
Sayles continues his work for hire on features and television series, as well as writing original scripts. He will be shooting his 18th feature, currently titled Go for Sisters, this summer.
John Sayles's website
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John Sayles is a force of nature, a do-it-yourself renaissance man - director, actor, screenwriter, script doctor, novelist. As far as we know, he wasn't part of the Navy Seal Team 6 that nabbed Bin Laden, but his boundless creative energy and narrative marksmanship, not to mention his longevity, put him squarely in a most elite squad of storytellers. Melville, Whitman, Mark Twain, Robert Altman: like the greatest American originals, Sayles has crossed genres and warped minds for three decades now, unleashing classics such as Return of the Secaucus Seven, Matewan, Eight Men Out, The Secret of Roan Inish, Lone Star, and Sunshine State on the silver screen, and the National Book Award-nominated Union Dues and Los Gusanos, two heavyweight novels that could duke it out with just about any other contemporary work of fiction.
Now Sayles has unveiled his most ambitious project to date in any genre, A Moment In the Sun, a bloody, brilliant, nearly 1,000 page globetrotting epic set at the turn of the last century, a time not so different from our own, it turns out.
John recently took time out of his very busy schedule to talk to The Rumpus a block or so from New York's Port Authority. He had to embark on a cross-country road trip ...
When I get a little money I buy books...
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