Posts by author
Ian MacAllen
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Community Building Through Workshops
Julia Fierro successfully launched her debut novel, Cutting Teeth, earlier this summer. A decade ago, she wasn’t so lucky with her first manuscript. Fierro arrived in New York City after graduating from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop only to face rejection.…
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Riskier Books Find Readers
The changing economics of the publishing industry may be hurting profits, but it has also allowed writers room to experiment with new forms that are often more challenging to readers than has been allowable in the past. Instead of meeting…
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Tehran Taxi Library
A taxi driving husband-and-wife team converted their cab into a library with more than 40 titles, reports The Wall Street Journal. Mehdi Yazdany and Sarvenaz Heraner sell about 30 books a day, but also give away books to passengers who…
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Book Hunting
Future generations may never understand the simply joy of searching a used bookstore for a long-coveted title. While online megastores allow readers access to virtually any book, typing a title into a search box is much less satisfying than sleuthing…
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Author Selling Postcards Written in Blood
Writing a novel requires plenty of time, and Irish author Julian Gough is hoping to fund that time with a Kickstarter campaign he has dubbed Litcoin. For small amounts of money, Gough will send contributors postcards stained with whiskey, coffee,…
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Novels Are a Long Time Coming
Contrary to the mission of National Novel Writing Month, most novels take far longer to complete, as stay-at-home dad Ryan McSwain learned when he set out to write his first novel, Monsters All the Way Down. The book, due out…
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The Floating Library of Minnesota
With 10,000 lakes, it was bound to happen: The Floating Library, an eight foot square stocked with 80 books. Most of the volumes are handmade art books, the Star Tribune reports. Artist Sarah Peters created the library and serves as…
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Literary Pioneers
Neither publishing books nor running a farm are particular easy career choices, but the folks over at Pioneers Press do both. The Pitch has an extensive write up on the Lansing, Kansas-based press, an experiment in sustainable business.
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The Post-Wounded Woman
Leslie Jamison‘s The Empathy Exams coins the phrase “Post-Wounded Woman,” referring to women who “are wary of melodrama so they stay numb or clever instead. Post-wounded women make jokes about being wounded or get impatient with women who hurt too much.”…
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Notable NYC: 8/16–8/22
Saturday 8/16: Natalia Sylvester reads her debut novel Chasing the Sun (June 2014) about a kidnapping in politically tumultuous 1990s Peru. BookCourt, 7 p.m., free. John Thomas Menesini, Karen Lillis, Jason Price Everett, and Moon Temple read at Full Bookcase.…
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Submission Strategy
Writers don’t always use their time efficiently when it comes to submitting to literary journals. Luanne Castle, writing at The Review Review, explores strategies for improving the submission process: I began to focus on quality rather than quantity. To find…
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Bringing Tolstoy to the West
More people were reading Tolstoy than any other author in translation at the beginning of the 20th century, but as late as the 1880s, few non-Russians had even heard of him. Translators were deterred partly because of the length of…