How to Enjoy Poetry
Poetry can intimidate. Casual consumers of other art forms like film or fiction often willingly offer uninformed opinions, even if that only means rating a product on Amazon. But asking…
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Ian MacAllen
1314 posts
Ian MacAllen is the author of Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American (Rowman & Littlefield, April 2022). His writing has appeared in Chicago Review of Books, Southern Review of Books, The Offing, 45th Parallel Magazine, Little Fiction, Vol 1. Brooklyn, and elsewhere. He tweets @IanMacAllen and is online at IanMacAllen.com.
Notable NYC: 5/10–5/16
Saturday 5/10: Stephen Boyer and Holly Pester join the Segue Series. Boyer compiled the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology. Zinc Bar, 4:30 p.m., $5. Rachel Kushner and Rob Spillman discuss…
Literary Citizens Also Need to Write
The writing community has lately been buzzing with literary citizenship—attending readings, writing reviews, supporting other writers with blurbs or buying their books (preferably from independent bookstores). But not everyone is…
Influence Without Anxiety
Inspiration comes from many sources, including the books we read. As we internalize other authors’s work, they inevitably influence our writing (often without us ever knowing). The novelist Kim Triedman…
Talking About Oppression
Writers who deal with oppression are as varied as the forms of oppression they face. Kiese Laymon and Leigh Stein come from two disparate backgrounds, writes Rachel Edelman in Critical…
Details Emerging for Amtrak Writing Residency
The Amtrak Writer Residency—an impromptu marketing program conceived of over Twitter—finally seems to be taking shape. After Alexander Chee mentioned his enjoyment of writing on trains, Amtrak jumped at the chance…
In Defense of Literary Agents
The rise of self-publishing and smaller independent presses has left many writers questioning the value of literary agents and their fifteen percent commissions. The collaborative nature of publishing depends on…
Life Lessons from Children’s Literature
The stories we read as children often stick with us for a lifetime, and so children’s literature can have a far greater impact on readers than books written for adults.…
Profiling Roxane Gay
Tim Obaro profiles Rumpus Essays Editor Roxane Gay and looks at her debut novel, An Untamed State, for Chicago Magazine. The novel follows a middle-class newlywed kidnapped while on vacation in…
Notable NYC: 5/3–5/9
Saturday 5/3: Joanna Fuhrman, Dan Magers, and Debora Kuan launch the Hyperallergic Poetry reading series. Berl’s Poetry Shop, 7:30 p.m., free. Melanie Neilson and Kate Zambreno join the Segue Series.…
White People Everywhere
White male editors still dominate publishing and white male authors still dominate bestseller lists. Writing over at Plougshares, literary agent Eric Nelson explores the problem: I have frequently presented books as…
Police Called on Teens Giving Away Banned Book
After Sherman Alexie’s novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was banned by an Idaho school district, a crowdsourced funding effort bought a book for every kid in…