Posts by author
Ian MacAllen
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Poetry Fight
The 1968 Stony Brook World Poetry Conference brought together more than 100 poets of varying styles and personalities. After a boozy weekend, at the farewell party, emotions (and presumably alcohol) spilled over into a massive brawl. Writing for the New…
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Can Beer Save Bookstores?
Independent booksellers face plenty of competition from national chains and the Internet, but a new kind of hybrid store might offer a model that Amazon can never replicate: bookstore bars. Niamh Ni Mahoileoin writes over at ZY that successful bar-bookstores…
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Illustrated Orwell
Commemorating the 50th anniversary of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Ralph Steadman has illustrated the classic satire with distinctive interpretations of the book. Brain Pickings has gathered some of the gleefully odd images.
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Details Inform Readers Beyond Fictional Reality
Fiction writing gains more than verisimilitude from the included details. Writing at Beyond the Margins, Nichole Bernier examines how a writer’s choice of details informs the reader about a great deal more than the reality of a story: But choosing which facts…
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Notable NYC: 4/26–5/2
Saturday 4/26: Andrew Durbin and Rod Smith join the Segue Series. Durbin’s Mature Themes is forthcoming from Nightboat Books. Zinc Bar, 4:30 p.m., $5. Brooklyn Zine Fest. Brooklyn Historical Society, 11 a.m., free. Sunday 4/27: Emily Brandt, editor of No…
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Celebrating DIY Ethos
The Brooklyn Zine Fest returns this weekend with a two-day long event and more than 150 writers, artists, and publishers. The festival celebrates self-published chapbooks and includes panel discussions on a variety of topics. Most zines are between $1 and…
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All the Good Literary Citizens
The idea of literary citizenship suggests writers should belong to a kibbutz of bibliophiles where everyone contributes to the greater good by writing reviews, attending readings, and supporting independent, neighborhood retailers. But all this goodhearted community camaraderie has devalued writing…
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Lit Fic Is Just Another Genre
Jane Austen wrote for money. She also made readers laugh. So why are her books considered literature rather than genre fiction? Clever marketing, claims Elizabeth Edmondson over at the Guardian. Despite many attempts to define “literary fiction” as something dry…
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The Rise of a New Socialist Literary Scene
Facing financial inequality and burdened with debt, millennials have discovered Marxism, writes Timothy Shenk for the Nation. And millennial writers are leveraging technology, rejecting old guard institutions, and constructing new forums for discussion: Combine all this with some fondness for…
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Joyce Proves as Difficult to Translate as to Read
The first of three parts of a Chinese translation of Finnegans Wake consumed eight years of translator Dai Congrong’s life. The almost unreadable book proves even more difficult to translate because of the many puns and layered meanings, explains MobyLives: The…
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How the Paperback Saved Civilization
With America gripped by the Great Depression, booksellers found that $2.75 put hardcover books out of reach for most readers. (A movie ticket then cost just 20 cents.) In 1939, with a full-page ad in the New York Times and…
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Gary Shteyngart Won’t Blurb Your Book
A Gary Shteyngart blurb seemed almost a rite of passage in recent years, with the author of Super Sad True Love Story offering his recommendation to more than one hundred books. But Kirsten Reach reports that the author has retired…