No Way to Avoid Things Mattering: A Dream Life by Claire Messud
The placement of a marquee tent at a party or the tension between the caterer and a housekeeper take on outsized importance.
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Posts Tagged: claire messud
Life is Damage: A Conversation with Claire Messud
If you’re interested in character, then you’re interested in perspective, and intimacy, and in the distinctions—and distance—between one person’s mind and another’s.
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Notable Online: 1/31–2/6
Literary events taking place virtually this week!
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Notable Online: 10/18–10/24
Literary events taking place virtually this week!
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Notable Online: 10/11–10/17
Literary events taking place virtually this week!
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The Mentor Series: Emily J. Smith and Chloe Caldwell
Emily J. Smith interviews her mentor, Chloe Caldwell.
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Notable Online: 7/5–7/11
Literary events taking place virtually this week!
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Notable NYC: 6/9–6/15
Literary events in and around New York City this week!
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Saying What Shouldn’t Be Said: A Conversation with Julie Buntin
Julie Buntin discusses her debut novel, Marlena, why writing about teenage girls is the most serious thing in the world, and finding truths in fiction.
...moreUnlikable and Unapologetic
Supposedly “unlikable” female characters are often the most complex, humanly flawed, and interesting ones—yet many readers are perturbed by such representations of women. In an excerpt from her collection The Geek Feminist Revolution, Kameron Hurley muses on the reasons why female protagonists are uniquely expected to be likable: When you find yourself reading about a gun-slinging, […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Sunil Yapa
Sunil Yapa discusses his debut novel, Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist, radical empathy, growing up surrounded by politics, and losing the first draft of his novel in Chile.
...moreA Fair Shake for Flawed Female Characters
Over at the Guardian, Emma Jane Unsworth considers the apparent likeability divide between anti-heroes—as it turns out, a heavily gendered archetype—and their female counterparts. Why does it seem that readers have a more negative reaction to women behaving badly and having existential crises in fiction? And why do we more often conflate character and author […]
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The Bitch in My Book
I didn’t have any conscious intentions for the kind of protagonist Marjorie would be. She indulged every bad instinct. And it was glorious.
...moreNotable NYC: 2/1–2/7
Saturday 2/1: Chris Hosea writes customized poetry for visitors of Ugly Duckling Presse’s gallery event. Third Factory at Old American Can Factory, noon, free. Chris Nealon and Catherine Wagner read poetry as part of the Segue Reading Series. Zinc Bar, 4:30 p.m., $5. Sunday 2/2: Robert Seidman celebrates James Joyce’s 132nd birthday. Seidman is co-author […]
...moreClaire Messud on making friends with Characters
Annasue McCleave from Publishers Weekly suggested during an interview with Claire Messud, “I wouldn’t want to be friends” with Nora, the fiery protagonist in Messud’s new novel, The Woman Upstairs. “[Nora’s] outlook is almost unbearably grim,” continues McCleave. Messud shot back: For heaven’s sake, what kind of question is that? Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert? Would you […]
...moreNotable New York, This Week 4/26 – 5/2
This week in New York the sixth annual PEN World Voices Festival (PWVF) opens its week-long celebration of international writing with such notable literary figures as Sherman Alexie, Claire Messud, Yiyun Li, Salman Rushdie and Lewis Lapham among others (Full Schedule Here), Agriculture Reader holds a launch party, the Dead or Alive exhibition opens at […]
...morePoetic Lives Online: Links by Brian Spears
I’m always interested in the different ways poets are exploring to get poems out to the reading public. Cellpoems calls itself “a txt-msg poetry journal,” though thankfully none of the poems I’ve looked at thus far have been written in text-speak. Sina Queyras asks “what is the wilderness and what is it doing in poetry? […]
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