Posts by author
Guia Cortassa
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Five Things About Ashley Ford
Blogger and writer Ashley Ford is profiled at the Indianapolis Star. She talks about her childhood in Indiana, writing a memoir, and more: We’re never going to see eye-to-eye on what’s OK to write about. I’m not trying to embarrass or hurt…
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Irony Genius Vs. Realism Hero
If Franzen is our genius realist, and DFW our genius postmodernist — how might they meld irony and sincerity? In an excerpt over at Salon from his new book, Keep It Fake: Inventing an Authentic Life, Eric G. Wilson talks irony, realism,…
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An Unlikely Event
That morning, Blume, in a pink baseball cap and sneakers, was taking her daily two-mile walk on a path that snakes along the beach. At 8 a.m., the sun was already strong, but the more Blume talked, the faster she…
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Readymade Novels
According to Shaj Mathew, novelists are more and more approaching writing as conceptual art, creating “readymade” novels. You can read his take on the “Reality Hunger generation” over at The New Republic.
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How Soon Is Too Soon?
Leslie Jamison and Benjamin Moser tackle a long-debated question for the Bookends column: “Should There Be a Minimum Age for Writing a Memoir?”. They both agree there isn’t—you can read their reasoning over at the New York Times.
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Repeating Death
Placed after a mention of death or dying, Kurt Vonnegut’s “So it goes” refrain throughout Slaughterhouse Five utilizes repetition to explore the inevitability of death. Over at the Ploughshares blog, E.V. De Cleyre considers how Kurt Vonnegut uses repetition in relation…
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Writing, Titling, Tricoloning
Greek for “of equal number of clauses,” isocolon is a rhetorical device that produces a sense of order by balancing parallel elements that are similar in structure and length within a sentence. An isocolon need not have three elements, but…
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A Woman Who Shouts Into the Sea
I was convinced it was impossible for me not to be a writer, but to be a writer who was a woman—because I was a transwoman, and for most of my life I did not meet or see anyone like…
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Reading Between the Lines
Here is what I mean by meta-fiction: all these books, stories, and bodies of work contain made-up books and bodies of work. Some are based on real books. Some are making fun of real books, a little bit, gently. Some…
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Childless Spinsters
Not getting married and not having children are still controversial decisions for women. Over at the Los Angeles Review of Books, Minda Honey shares her own experience, and reviews three recent books on the subject by Sara Eckel, Meghan Daum, and…
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The World of Mommy Bloggers
Mommy blogging has not, of course, been a panacea, remedying women’s undervaluation. In keeping with certain political ideals of the time, the Wages for Housework campaign sought to redistribute wealth more fairly. Mommy blogging, by contrast, offers rewards that only…
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The MFA Way
In large part, I get to live it now because of those creative writing programs—one MA and one MFA—and also, at least equally, because of the time between them, which I spent out in the real world. Here is some…