The Poetry of Liu Xia
Liu Xia’s burden has become too heavy. Her heart is beginning to fail. In isolation, she can only stare at a tree through her window, a tree that a bird…
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Olivia Wetzel
88 posts
Olivia Wetzel is a student taking time off to live and work in San Francisco. If she could be any animal, she’d be a penguin. She’s never eaten pepperoni before, and one of her feet is a whole size bigger than the other.
A World Made of Words
At ZYZZYVA, Christian Kiefer talks with novelist Scott Hutchins and playwright Octavio Solis about learning and developing as writers, the difference between writing plays and writing novels, and writing as a craft:…
On Art and Writing
Trying to convey emotion in composition (plot) and not brushwork (emotional question) is misguided. Author Benjamin Percy has a quote that applies to this: “A-list movies are always about a…
Flying Under the Radar
Author and photographer Rebekah Bergman talks with Electric Literature about the influence of her photography on her fiction, the rising popularity of post-apocalyptic fiction, the use of fantasy to explore…
Remembering Paul West
The Paris Review remembers Paul West, an absurdist author of over fifty books. Excerpts from his satire, Portable People, can be found here: Fat men are the wisest dreamers. I always…
John Cage’s Diary
Late composer and writer John Cage’s diary is being published in late October. John Cage: Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) contains Cage’s stories…
The Influence of the Internet
The Believer interviews Joshua Cohen, author of Book of Numbers. Cohen is currently working on his newest novel, PCKWCK. He talks to The Believer about preparing for writing and the influence…
Understanding Faulkner
Richard Grant discusses how his time living in Mississippi provided him with a more full understanding of William Faulkner’s language. Despite studying Faulkner at school in England, Grant felt that…
Reporting as Literature
Reporter and writer Svetlana Alexievich recently won the Nobel Prize for literature. In a piece for the New Yorker, Philip Gourevitch brings up some questions that this poses about the relationship between reportage…
(Almost) Meaning
Over at Granta, Greg Jackson thinks about fiction in contrast with nonfiction, and how writers choose to write fiction precisely because they do not know exactly what they want to…
Learning From the Worst
The representation of writing students in film is an interesting one, as Leah Schnelbach explores for Electric Literature. There exists a trend in which writing students are shown to be young…
Sean Kilpatrick on Inspiration
Nicholas Rys interviews Sean Kilpatrick, author of Sucker June, on the creation of his characters, comparisons of the book to Nabokov’s Lolita, and how film inspires the writer: I came…