The Great Nonfiction Escape
But in the grand scheme of things, immersion journalism and other forms of narrative nonfiction, such as memoir, have done more for me as a reader than as a writer,…
Posts by author
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.
House of Library Catalog Cards
The New York Public Library owns an absolutely peculiar collection: a 6000+ cards catalog of hand-typed children books reviews, written by librarians over the years. Lynn Lobash, NYPL reader services…
Crowdsourced Poetry
Since May, poet David Lehman has been working on a crowdsourced sonnet over at The American Scholar. Lehman wrote the poem’s first line, and then chose the next 13 from…
Amy Bloom, Clearly and Persuasively
In the latest “By the Book” over at the New York Times, Amy Bloom talks about the books on her nightstand, which writers she’d invite to a summer picnic (even if…
Literary Namesakes
Sometimes, an eponym has a literary origin from a famous character. Over at the Guardian, Paul Anthony Jones takes us on a tour of literary eponyms and introduces us to…
Dear Diary, A History
The diary novel is an understudied genre dating back to the Victorian era, often associated with young women, that includes (and sometimes combines) fiction and non-fiction. At The Hairpin, Johannah…
Poetry and a Son’s Death
Finding a way to grieve for the passing of a child is a complicated matter. Poet Edward Hirsch lost his son in 2011, and has just completed a 76-page elegy…
A Really Strange Story
“I have a kind of weird story related to death. Something my father told me. He said it was an actual experience he had when he was in his early…
A Fictionalized Betrayal
This was my first experience of being fictionalized. I still recall the yellow-white flash of queasiness, the mortification: a sense of powerlessness and an utter lack of recourse. What if…
Third Man’s Language Lessons
Jack White’s Third Man Records is expanding to include books. August 5th will see the release of Third Man Books‘s first hardcover title, Language Lessons, Volume 1, a 321-page collection…
Building Our Own Communities
As Ramadan approaches and we look for a family to break fast with come sundown, the realities of being a transgender Muslim set in. Flashing all of the proper signals…
Loving Poems But Not Poetry Books
Although Americans’ love for poetry has yet to reach the wild heights of Abu Dhabi’s hit reality show Million’s Poet where 70 million global viewers watched dueling versifiers vie for…