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Join NOW!90s kids probably remember Goosebumps, the popular series of children’s horror novellas that put kid protagonists in all manner of spooky situations. Author R.L. Stine took to Reddit for an AMA last week, holding forth on questions like “Do you write out fully sketched profiles of characters before you start the plot?” and “Why the war […]
...moreYou may have missed Matt Groening and Lynda Barry in Sydney this past weekend, but never fear: over at the Guardian, you can still read about their lifelong friendship, which persists despite diverging paths. Groening is best known for The Simpsons, Barry for Ernie Pook’s Comeek; it all began at Evergreen College, where Matt Groening edited […]
...moreMeryl Williams was going to publish her roller derby memoir in 2016. Then she moved. Then she decided to move again. Some other things happened too. In a new essay for The Billfold, Williams walks us through her one step forward, two steps back journey towards (not) getting published (yet). She is good at showing the silver lining […]
...moreHappy day after Halloween! For the New York Times, Terrence Rafferty reviews a variety of chilling fiction, and delves deep into why these are exceptional: The short story is the ideal form for horror because it can convey a quick, vivid impression of fear, without having to extend the action past the breaking point of the reader’s […]
...moreAt WhiskeyPaper, Linda Niehoff writes briefly and beautifully about fire and magic, hinting at post-apocalyptic worlds with lines like, “We’d spent long evenings sewing together old bedsheets and nightgowns, the last pillowcase.” “Elsewhere” brings to mind Ray Bradbury and autumn nights, and is best read in one sitting. It comes with a suggested song—Iron & […]
...moreCartoonist Julia Wertz needs your cool New York City signs. Per the New Yorker contributor’s Instagram: Hey New Yorkers! Send me photos or tips about cool signs around NYC so I can draw them for my book! Photos much appreciated but location data is good too. Juliajwertz at gmail In addition to her work documenting […]
...moreHalloween comes early with Jezebel’s annual Spooky Story Contest, where readers leave their terrifying tales in the comments (they can also be emailed to [email protected]). Other than that, the rules are are as follows: 1) The story must be true, and 2) The story must be scary. Fans of Creepypasta, Channel Zero, and all manner […]
...moreSince the the first Nobel Prize was awarded, Cassie Gonzales explains in “An Unconventional Nobel Laureate” at the Ploughshares blog, the Laureate winner list has not been a bastion of diversity. However, Selma Lagerlöf was an exception—in her brief, funny essay, Gonzalez explains how a “disabled, Swedish, cross-genre, lady-loving author” bucked the white male (and heterosexual and able-bodied) […]
...moreComic artist and writer Mike Norton is doing alright. After working on various titles for DC (Queen & Country, Gravity, Runaways, The All-New Atom, Green Arrow/Black Canary), in 2011 he launched his webcomic Battlepug. In 2012, Battlepug won an Eisner for Best Digital Comic. He’s a co-creator of Revival, a critically acclaimed and commercially successful […]
...moreLong before Curtis Sittenfeld was a New York Times bestselling author (Eligible), she was friends with Sam Park (This Burns My Heart). And they’re still friends: in an essay for the New Yorker, Sittenfeld chronicles their decades-long platonic romance, from early days collaborating on “50 Most Beautiful Sexiest Men Alive of the Year at Stanford” to dedicating their […]
...moreIn Brooklyn Magazine’s “The Musical Map of the United States,” writers create a soundtrack of place association. The 50+ essays on songs and their states are sweet and sad and funny, but always specific. Sleeper hits like Emily Hilleren’s “The Rural Alberta Advantage” (North Dakota) give a very personal sense of what it means to […]
...moreEssayist Marie Myung-Ok Lee’s obsession with author photos leads to authorial reflections on gender, representation, and what writers owe the public in “Occupy Author Photo: On Elena Ferrante, Privacy, and Women Writers” at The Millions. Starting with her own experiences and branching out to Mary Oliver, Sarah Howe, and eventually Elena Ferrante, she calls for […]
...moreAlthough best known for “The Lottery”, there was much more to Shirley Jackson’s work—and life. At the New York Times, Charles McGrath reviews of Ruth Franklin’s new biography A Rather Haunted Life, and explores Franklin’s journalistic yet personal take on the woman who remains massively influential, but often overlooked in the American literary canon. In spite of (and […]
...moreComedian Sara Benincasa is no stranger to being a working writer—in fact, she just wrote a book about it. Now, at Medium, she shares her secrets on getting published. Accessible and funny, Benincasa offers tips like “NO MONEY UPFRONT BECAUSE ANY AGENT WHO DOES THAT IS A CROOK,” details about advances and royalties, and the always-important […]
...moreAt Electric Literature, poet and critic K. Thomas Khan walks through the unraveling of a relationship, deliberate isolation from online life, and the questions both raise in a lyrical, longform piece that pushes and pulls at the concepts of personal and professional connection. In-between 3 a.m. fights and fortune teller visits and literally and metaphorically going […]
...moreCable television channel FX has purchased Meaty, a comedy series based on Samantha Irby’s memoir of the same title. Developed by Irby, Jessi Klein (head writer for Inside Amy Schumer, author of You’ll Get Over It), and Abbi Jacobson (Broad City, author of forthcoming Carry this Book), the show will focus on “failed relationships, taco feasts, […]
...moreRoxane Gay is from the Midwest, but as a woman of color she feels like an outsider in the rural places she often inhabits. In an essay for Brevity, “Black in Middle America,” Gay examines reactions to her face in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a place so remote “my blackness was more curiosity than threat”, and in Illinois’s cornfields—somewhere blackness […]
...moreWomen loving women is nothing new, and not a phase: in Hazel Newlevant’s comic at BuzzFeed, “Badass Bisexual Women In History You Should Know,” she walks through the personal lives of Josephine Baker, Virginia Woolf, and more as part of a conversation with her mother, who starts out with one opinion but seems open to another. For […]
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