Posts by author
Mary Allen
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Books as Art
We love books for many reasons. Take a quick break from marveling at the interweb and appreciate the physical book as an object, and as a piece of art.
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Not Quite Human
For the second time that day, then, I waited in the dark for something not quite human—and all too human—to begin. If you haven’t seen Charlie Kaufman’s new film Anomalisa, we highly recommend that you do. And then after, read…
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Writ in Water
John Keats died on February 23rd, 1821. The Paris Review muses on the death obsessed poet’s life, and what he cryptically requested be written on his tombstone: Here lies one whose name was writ in water.
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Teaching a Robot to Love
Last year physicist Stephen Hawking suggested that advanced artificial intelligence, or AI, could lead to the end of humanity. How are scientists working on this issue? Teaching robots empathy with books! Newsweek reports on the Quixote system, which teaches AI…
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The Invisible Lower Class
Raymond Carver and other “Kmart realists” championed the working class in high-brow literary fiction. But has the realism of the 99% gone out of style? Electric Literature explores.
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How to Write Something
Keep a close eye on your Twitter account. Important things may be said there that you will be expected to weigh in on, and if you don’t, everyone will wonder if you fell asleep in the bathroom stall of the…
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Authors and the Automated
The Believer Logger contributes more insights into the never-ending conversation on the role of technology in our writing. Does it mean demise? Or can authors persist on in the face of an ever more autogenerated world?
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The Autobiographical Novel
Why is it not a memoir, people will ask. I tell more truth in fiction, you might say. Alexander Chee gives step-by-step instructions on how to write an autobiographical novel, and it’s beautiful.
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National Amnesia
Race is an important and central issue in the United States, but what about abroad? It appears that both the United States and the United Kingdom are witnessing one of those moments when we confront what Toni Morrison said in…
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Metaphor in Retrograde
Is your big break finally coming? Will you get that novel finished? Are you about to be struck over the head with a mallet of inspiration? All of these questions answered and more, in your February 2016 writer’s horoscope.
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Do You Remember That Thing?
Where do our words go when we lose them? Jenny Diski embarks on an exploration into vanishing vocabulary: So I had a thought about writing a book for the elderly, the old. Those who have lost their words more comprehensively than the friends…
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That’s Racist
As much as we cherish the books from our childhood, there is no denying that some of the stories are just a little (or a lot) racist. But how do we reconcile this truth? They were the feckless prisoners of their…