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From Stephen Elliott
Sylvia Plath may not be best known for her paper dolls, but we don’t usually envision Mark Twain as an avid fan of scrapbooking, either.
Check out this cool collection of the artwork of famous authors, which also includes William Burroughs’s gunshot paintings and Charles Bukowski’s watercolors.
...moreThe LA Times reports that Twitter has released a how-to-manual titled “Twitter for Authors.”
The guide details six tips particularly geared towards writers, some of which include the not-so-helpful “Be Authentic, Be Yourself,” and “Above All, Have Fun.” Nowadays many authors use the social networking site as a means of self-promotion, and entire transcontinental book clubs have sprung from its 140 character limit.
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A woman who claimed a novelist and former friend based the character of a sexually promiscuous alcoholic on her has won a $100,000 libel award from a Georgia jury.
Vicki Stewart claimed that Haywood Smith, a former childhood friend, used her as the basis for a character in her novel The Red Hat Club.
...moreKaye Gibbons, author of the 1987 debut best-seller Ellen Foster and several subsequent novels, is the subject of an Associated Press profile published in several newspapers and Sunday book sections over the weekend. The article traces her downfall from “vivacious” best-selling author to her 2008 arrest for forging hydrocodone prescriptions to her disappearance into mental illness.
...moreAt The Rumpus, we believe that a healthy literary culture is one which embraces writing of all kinds, by authors of all stripes – young and old, established and emerging, traditional and experimental, writing from the margins or from (or about) the heart of mainstream culture, published by “major” houses or by smaller presses.
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