Writing in the Age of Google
If there is an individual alive in 2015 with the genius and vision of James Joyce, they’re probably working for Google, and if there isn’t, it doesn’t matter since the…
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Guia Cortassa
474 posts
Guia Cortassa was born, lives, and works in Milan, Italy. After working as a Contemporary Art curator, she went back to writing. She is a contributing editor for Ondarock and her writing has appeared on Rivista Studio, Flair and the Quietus. She compulsively tweets @gcmorvern.
Tangled Detectives
While the novels’ detective protagonists pick their way with varying success through a maze of vexing people and circumstances, readers navigates their own tangled maze of contradictory conventions as the…
A Character By Any Other Name
Over at the New Yorker, Sam Sacks considers why “in recent years, a curious number of novelists have declined to avail themselves of that basic prerogative: naming their creations,” letting a…
Hunting the Pages
I find the threat of predation satisfying in a short story because, when done well, it solicits a visceral reaction. The etymology of the word visceral can be traced to…
Live Long and Prosper Writing
Sticking a grade-schooler in front of Star Trek might lead to a brief obsession with spandex, but with me it also meant absorbing tons of non-grade school words. From “purview”…
Writing in the Age of Social Networks
[W]anting to make a career in letters and not being on Twitter and Facebook — that is, not wanting to share your work constantly with the strangers you met on…
Chekhov in His Own Words
All that is nonsense though. Write what you like. If you haven’t facts make up with lyricism. In 1892, Anton Chekhov sent a letter to V. A. Tihonov including a…
The End Has a Start
I wasn’t sure that it was elegant, or even grammatically sound, but I did know it was just how my narrator—who spends the novel negotiating issues of privacy and voyeurism—would…
On Sisters, Love, and Rage
Sometimes I envy Absalom. He had recourse. He had power. He raised up an army in his rage. He did something. He turned his rage into an insurrection. All I’ve…
Writing the Story of Your Life
Keeping a diary requires strong commitment and great honesty, and Zadie Smith has struggled with the idea of journaling all through her life, as she writes in her latest essay, “Life Writing,” over at Rookie.
For the Love of Chapters
What I’m talking about instead are the ways in which chapters are not merely components of a narrative’s foundational architecture but also part of its aesthetic, i.e., more like those…
Reviewing July
So my introduction to July was one at which I watched her redefine boundaries and hijack something destined to be inert and turn it into something uncomfortably alive, whether you…