Lit Hub
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A Hopeful Construct
If writing can’t be taught, why do we spend so much time talking about it? Jayne Anne Phillips chimes in on the MFA debate: Life does not ‘tenure’ anyone. In that sense, it was all a hopeful construct.
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Folk Poets and Scrambled Eggs
I think that’s avant-garde—the meeting of need and language. Over at Lit Hub, contemporary poetic hero Ben Lerner sits down with contemporary poetic heroine Eileen Myles to talk about vernacular, supercilious labels, the trials and tribulations of a young poet after…
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This Week in Short Fiction
Imagine a world in the late 21st century: countries are underwater from the rising oceans, Europeans have become refugees, and a mathematical formula has been discovered that explains the entire universe, the applications of which include human flight (sans airplane)…
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Rock Meets Paper
Musicians have always drawn inspiration from literary artists, and vice versa. Over at Lit Hub, Tobias Carroll explores the increasingly literary side of contemporary rock festivals: Perhaps the rise of literary events at music festivals is part of a broader…
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Humpty Dumpty, the Original Mansplainer
I can explain all the poems that were ever invented—and a good many that haven’t been invented yet. No, that’s not the obnoxious guy from your Wallace Stevens seminar—that’s Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty, explaining “Jabberwocky” to Alice. Let Evan Kindley…
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Portrait of a Writing Center
Over at Lit Hub, Michele Filgate is writing a series of articles on six of the country’s top writing centers, starting with GrubStreet in Boston. Rather than competing with MFA programs for students, GrubStreet Executive Director Eve Bridburg sees writing centers…
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The Writer and Social Media
Alexander Chee writes for LitHub on Elena Ferrante’s pseudonymous, social-media-free existence and the choices other authors have made to dis/engage with social media at points in their careers: Ferrante’s anonymity is something of a feminist project, also. No one is…
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Subverting the Immigrant Experience
In an interview with Bethanne Patrick at Lit Hub, Vu Tran discusses his novel Dragonfish and the idea of subverting the (othered) expectations of immigrant experience through conventions of genre.
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Good ol’ Gregor Brown
Kafka’s Metamorphosis just had its centennial anniversary; to celebrate, Lit Hub has brought us a lovely comic by R. Sikoryak, combining beloved Charlie Brown with beloathed Gregor Samsa. The results are fantastic.
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Those Who Dwell Under New York
A consequence of darkness is mystery. The farther underground I went, the more mysterious the people became. More over at Lit Hub from Colum McCann about getting to know the thousands of people who once lived in the tunnels under Manhattan.
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Books That Create Original Dialects
Many of the best books in classic literature innovated some aspect of storytelling, but few can claim to have ventured into tinkering deeply with language itself. Over at Lit Hub, Stephen Sparks writes on some of the best books that have…
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A Bookstore in Brookline
Do you ever dream of working in a bookstore? Well, in an exclusive interview with Lit Hub, the booksellers of Brookline Booksmith provide insight into what it’s like: How incredibly complex … and never-ending, always expanding the work is. How much…