B. E. Hopkins
Writer, Editor, Teacher, and TranslatorClick on the navigation bar to read more about my creative and professional projects. Some headings have drop-down menus.
THE IMPEDIMENTS TO JOY
- The Impediments to Joy is a mock-epic tale of love wrapped in a coming-of-age story, garnished with philosophy and fart jokes. It is a portrait of adolescence taken on its own terms, yet tempered with adult irony.
Fifteen-year-old Daniel Kenning falls in love with his Homecoming date after fingering her on the floor of his friend's bedroom. A naïve poet fraught with insecurities, he decides the best way to win her heart would be to write her a virtuoso sonnet cycle about their night together. He is surprised to find that this proves not to be the correct approach. What follows is a teenage comedy of errors: Infinite Jest meets a high school production of Romeo and Juliet in which our star-cross'd lover keeps falling off the balcony…
As Daniel struggles to overcome his debilitating romanticism, the reader is drawn into the world of his precocious friends: reading Daniel's fifteen "Sonnets to L——"; flipping through the "Blue Book," their collective journal full of drug-muddled drawings; sharing in their jokes and arguments during role-playing sessions and play rehearsals; and tripping out on bottles of Vick's Formula 44. Readers can even make decisions on Daniel's behalf in a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novel-within-a-novel, as well as slip into Daniel's Romeo and Juliet/Gulf War mash-up dream sequence as the narration segues briefly into comic-book format. Despite its larger-than-life proportions, Daniel's story is universal: it explores how our early failures on the path from innocence to experience make us who we are and define who we wish to become.
To learn what Mitchell Albert, editor of the London-based literary journal PEN International, has to say about my novel or to read excerpts, click here.
- In July 2010, I translated French artist Matthieu Kavyrchine's newest catalog, "Silent Light" from French into English. In 2009, I wrote a translation of Kavyrchine's "Portfolio," published by the Fondation Cartier in Paris. (The English version can be found here.) My translation of Kavyrchine's biography was also reposted on the blog boiteaoutils: architecture early-warning radar.
- I am also working on a translation of French author Yann Moix's Anissa Corto.
- My translation of "Amantes d'Aurores" by Senegalese poet Amadou Lamine Sall appeared in the print edition of the "Context: Africa" issue of PEN International. The mission of International PEN is "to promote friendship and intellectual cooperation among writers everywhere, to fight for freedom of expression and represent the conscience of world literature."
- I posted another story from Model Homes. Originally a chapter in The Impediments to Joy, "Three Sisters" is now part of my short story collection.
- A third excerpt from my novel The Impediments to Joy was published online in the Fall 2008 issue of Contrary Magazine.
- I am currently researching a sci-fi historical-philosophical novel about Descartes called Meditations of the Machine. Check out my Robot and AI Blog!
- I posted some sample pages from the comic book section of Impediments. Click here to see the opening page or here for page four. (Click the image to downsize it to see the layout better.)
- A second excerpt from my first novel appeared in the "Writer Next Door" issue of PEN International magazine. (You can download a .pdf of part of the magazine by clicking here.) Click here to read what the editor of the magazine had to say about the novel, and to read other extracts.
- Part of my novel, a humorous sketch of my main characters' reaction to the end of the first Gulf War, was published online in the Winter 2008 issue of Contrary Magazine.
- I am currently teaching English Composition (EN101) as an adjunct professor at Frederick Community College in Maryland.
- I am a freelance proofreader and copy editor for Penguin Group (USA). Recently, I have edited books for such authors as Perez Hilton, Geraldo Rivera, Sara Paretsky, and Marie Osmond, as well as many popular sci-fi/fantasy, mystery, and military nonfiction writers.
- I also edit for Saqi Books, Steppe Magazine, and PEN International in the UK.
- In July 2008, I wrote a review of a restaurant called The Afghanistan on rue Saint-Maur in Paris for Steppe Magazine, a British travel journal focusing on Central Asian culture.
- In 2008, I helped write and edit a large-format photography book called A Book of Jews, which features 500 famous twentieth- and twenty-first–century Jewish artists, scientists, politicians, celebrities, and philanthropists.
- "Flowerbox" is online! Emil Spiro, a man born with fists the size of boxing gloves, wants nothing more than to be a florist. When Uncle Charlie gets the young boxer mixed up in the Mob, Emil finally sees his chance to get out of the ring. Special thanks to Jonathan O'Beirne, my co-director, for digitizing this and getting it on the Web.
- In June 2007, I completed an e-learning project for the IT Department of JetBlue Airways. The first course I wrote for JetBlue in 2005—Inflight E190 Transition Training—won a Silver medal for Custom Content from Brandon Hall at the Training Solutions 2006 conference in Denver. See my Instructional Design page for details.
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