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What does a growth of new grass on a hillside in spring make you feel? Is it a mixture of nostalgia and hope? Or what does a distant mountain range wreathed in a crown of clouds make you feel?
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Light reflects differently off near and faraway objects. It’s all about the light.
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“I wrote this book. I worked really, really hard on it, and I was a little scared by it.”
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Bieber is like a prism that reflects back whatever you want to see.
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Poet Stacy Szymaszek discusses her most recent collection, Journal of Ugly Sites & Other Journals, the “notebook genre,” and claiming a city—ugly sites and all.
...more… met, by the way, a brilliant ex-Cambridge poet at the wild St. Botolph’s Review party last week; will probably never see him again… but wrote my best poem about him afterwards—the only man I’ve met yet here who’d be strong enough to be equal with—such is life. At Lit Hub, Belinda McKeon pours over the […]
...moreIn recent years, many reputable publications have taken to charging reading fees and earlier this year, Nick Mamatas set off an Internet kerfuffle over The Offing‘s reading fee policies. The ethical quandary surrounding reading fees persist—not only are reading fees obstacles to diversity in writing, but the system is structured to ensure the continued success of […]
...moreI don’t know whether it is a hereditary characteristic, but our little family is altogether too prone to lie awake at nights hating ourselves for stupidities—technical or verbal or whatever—and to let careless, cruel remarks fester until they blossom in something like ulcer attacks—I know that during these last days I’ve been fighting an enormous […]
...moreKeeping a diary requires strong commitment and great honesty, and Zadie Smith has struggled with the idea of journaling all through her life, as she writes in her latest essay, “Life Writing,” over at Rookie.
...moreThe New Yorker has unlocked a selection of Jack Kerouac’s journals that ran in the magazine back in 1998. Beginning with his near-completion of Town and City, and ending days after its publication, the text captures the growing pains of a 25-year-old author: Got form-rejection card from Macmillan’s. I’m getting more confident and angrier each […]
...more“Will social media kill writers’ diaries?” So asks Rumpus contributor Michele Filgate, in a Salon piece that examines the growing usage of Twitter, Facebook, and other public outlets to allow readers to eavesdrop on the personal thoughts and process of being a writer. Opinions from Matt Bell, Jess Walter, Caroline Leavitt, and others round out Filgate’s […]
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Lately, over crumb-laden dinner tables and cups of coffee and on windy hillsides I ask friends, family, and peripheral acquaintances whether or not they write in a journal.
...moreOkay, the Slate video was cute the way it compared newspaper reporters to starving children in Africa, but it reminded me of something the poet Jake Adam York suggested on Facebook a few months ago–that with the large number of both university and independent journals seeing their funding drying up due to the bad economy, […]
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