Posts by author
Claire Burgess
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The Narrative of Zelda
In response to the news that Nintendo and Netflix may be developing a Legend of Zelda TV series, Ted Trautman at the Paris Review blog examines the character development and narrative structure (or lack thereof) of video games and wonders…
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Refinancing the Writing Life
The system for determining worth and value strikes me as terribly strange, and it occurs to me that it just might require a suspension of disbelief. Luckily for me, I know something about that. For Salon, Rachel Basch writes about…
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We Need Equal Books
While in one sense the propensity in mainstream discourse to describe racial conflict with words like “tolerance” and “hate”—rather than “power” or “oppression”—has made it possible for greater numbers of people to conceive of how racism affects individuals on a…
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The Gender Novels
Gender transition seems to fascinate just about everyone who hasn’t gone through it, so it makes sense that we get a lot of literary fiction on the subject . . . All these books were penned by cisgender—that is, non-transgender—authors.…
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The Best Worst Cover Art
Thanks to the Guardian, we are now aware of a little blog called Kindle Cover Disasters. The site collects the best of the worst e-book cover art ever to be copy-and-pasted on a home computer using Photoshop and some stock photos.…
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What Demands Retelling
I think what demands telling and retelling and re-retelling is this: any story in which complicated grief and desperate sadness is the main character . . . Loss is really the one thing we all share, rich and poor and…
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Grief Shatters Narratives
At Salon, Helen Macdonald talks about the unexpected success of her new memoir H is for Hawk, writing through grief, and her book’s unconventional mix of memoir, nature writing, and fiction: As the book progresses, all those different styles of…
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Technology Never Forgets
Draftback is a Google Chrome extension that allows you to watch every keystroke of every revision made to a Google Doc played back to you, opening up a new way to study how writers write. Chadwick Matlin at FiveThirtyEight tried…
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Green Eggs and Nudes
Dr. Seuss isn’t just for kids. Brain Pickings has a look into Dr. Seuss’s little-known book for adults, The Seven Lady Godivas, which, you may guess by the title, features a lot of illustrations of naked ladies.
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If It Quacks like a Dragon
Kazuo Ishiguro insists his new novel, The Buried Giant, is not a fantasy novel. Laura Miller at Salon agrees. Ursula K. Le Guin does not (and is a little insulted). David Barnett at The Guardian doesn’t care either way and…
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MFA-Gate Continues
Last week, Ryan Boudinot published the MFA-disparaging essay/listicle/cranky advice column that launched a thousand angry tweets. Electric Literature has two responses: one supporting Boudinot’s core argument and one rebutting it.
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Art and Letters
At The Millions, seven writers share the visual inspiration they keep in their writing spaces, whether an illustration to capture the mood of a novel-in-progress, a photo reminding them of what they’re working for, or a note sternly reminding them…