Posts by author
Victor Luo
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Finding Inspiration in Grandma’s Cookbook
My characters often follow their own family recipes. Our reenactment of the simple tasks of beating egg whites or stuffing meat into cabbage leaves blasts open a portal to a new old world. The vivid memories of a lovingly cooked…
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A Personality Test for Readers
What kind of reading would best suit someone with your personality? Lit Hub has an excerpt from the forthcoming book “Psychobook: Games, Tests, Questionnaires, Histories,” edited by Julian Rothenstein, that shares Robert McCrum’s questionnaire of ways to gauge readers personalities by their reading diets.
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The Power of Unreality
While fiction embraces the flights of fancy that come with imagination, nonfiction is fairly hostile to writers who stray too far away from the objective facts of the story. How closely should writers of nonfiction stick to facts? At Electric Literature,…
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Mexico City’s Budding Writing Scene
Writing in Mexico City is like holding a conversation when you’re under the takeoff and landing path of the city’s airplanes: you have to shut up sometimes, to let the noise take over everything, to let the sky split in…
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How a Poet Tackles Today’s Violence
I’ll start again by telling you that this is a body. A body that bears the weight of its makers. A body that’s trying to tell a story, without making it pretty, but this is perhaps where poetry fails me,…
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The Messy Life of Jonathan Safran Foer
It’s not easy being a literary star. From the existential crises that comes from fame to the struggle to follow up a critically acclaimed first novel, becoming “a writer” for life involves a lot more than publishing a bestseller. Read Lev Grossman’s…
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How to Write about the Disabled
Do not assume that empathy equals experience. Writing outside your personal experience is always a tricky thing, and writing about disabled people when you yourself are not disabled is an especially difficult thing to do. At Lit Hub, Nicola Griffith has…
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How to Make Reading a Habit
You tell yourself you should read more, but are you finding it hard to even pick up a book? Fret not; you’re not alone. Get yourself started one step at a time with some helpful tips from Tomas Laurinavicius at the Huffington…
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Appreciating Silence
We can best discern how loud our lives feel in the moments when we try to discipline both real and virtual decibels. As life becomes more modern with ever-advancing technology, noise builds and builds to the point where silence is…
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The Literary Value of Bodybuilding
With the pinnacle of human physical achievement on full display at the Summer Olympics, enjoy this article about writing literature about the ins and outs of bodybuilding.
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Combating Lit Journal Bias
In the latest installment of “The Blunt Instrument” over at Electric Literature, Elisa Gabbert tackles the delicate question of bias in literary journals. Her answer? Take thoughtful reflections and make careful adjustments.
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Data vs. Instincts
In the world of publishing, everything’s a gamble. How do successful editors manage to push out bestsellers? Is it good instincts, or data-driven predictions? Turns out, it’s a mix of both, and the influences are rarely ever clear.