Book Bench
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Thanks, The Book Bench
The New Yorker’s Book Bench linked to our interview with John Jeremiah Sullivan. We love you back!
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“Poet of the Disregarded”
At The Book Bench, Teju Cole reviews Across the Land and the Water, the first major volume of poems by W. G. Sebald. Walking us through the collection, Cole sheds light on the progression of Sebald’s poetic voice, technique, and concerns.…
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Female Detectives Then and Now
This Q&A with crime writer Denise Mina touches on office politics, rude women, and the evolution of the female detective. “Now you’ve reached the point where a woman is just a different type of detective. You’re not getting information just…
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New Self-publishing Service
Book Country, an online community created by Penguin this past spring, has announced the addition of a self-publishing component. Here’s an explanation of how it works. “BC offers three publishing “packages” at three prices: $549 for the professionally formatted print/e-book…
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Life Cycle of a Book
An interactive map of the life cycle of a book lets us visualize the publishing process. Hear about each step, from writing to author publicity and everything in between. (Via The Book Bench)
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Letter Play
“The challenge is simple: Create an image from a word, using only the letters contained in the word itself—and using only the shapes of the letters, without adding extra parts.” Facebook creative director Ji Lee has released a new collection,…
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YA Characters “Straightened”
Two co-authors of a post-apocalyptic young adult novel discuss how they were offered representation on the condition that they remove or straighten a gay character. “The conversation made it clear that the agent thought our book would be an easy…
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Should We Fight to Save the Indie Bookstore? (Yes).
Book Bench blogger, Macy Halford is lamenting the downfall of the indie bookstore. Much like the decimation of the video store, there’s a bunch of romance and nostalgia tied up with these places. But does that warrant all the talk…
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Obscure Sorrows
Do you have this? “Ecidivism: n. the habit of closing a browser tab to go do something else, only to absentmindedly return to the website you just left, which is your brain’s way of stress-testing your attention span under a…
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Wallstreet and Lit Life
What better way to celebrate humanity than acknowledging unexpected cultural overlaps? Wallstreet and the literary life have got some overlaps worthy of discussion. Because sometimes, during tough financial times, consulting a Thomas Wolfe novel for insight is the most helpful…
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Architecture Fiction
Founded in 2010, in New Orleans, The Hypothetical Development Organization, creates fictional futures for vacant, abandoned buildings or “implausible futures for unpopular places.” To learn more about this visual urban storytelling and the idea of architecture fiction head over to this…
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Exiled Writers
Writers exiled from their country of origin have a unique relationship to language, freedom and oppression. The context of a homeland functions simultaneously a point of inspiration for the writer and guidance for readers, and so writing about home is…