The Past and Present of Banned Books
‘Banned books’ sounds like a thing of the past. But over at Lit Hub, Amy Brady details the ways that the fight against censorship continues in libraries and schools today:…
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“Dear Abby” for Books
Stop any comparisons… turn to your own project with laser-beam focus, and bolster your own campaign as if you’ve spent years of blood, sweat, and tears working on this creative…
Creating the Defamiliar Experience
But I think of greater importance than a sense of commonality is one of understood difference. Fiction that respects us says, “I know you because I have not had your…
Books You Can Deadlift
At Lit Hub, Joshua Zadjman talks about Alan Moore’s Jerusalem as the new zenith of the modern doorstopper novel: What is Jerusalem? It’s an experience you can more easily press on people than explain to…
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…
The Appeal of Ferrante and Knausgaard
On Lit Hub, Stephanie Grant examines the deep pleasure and connection readers experience with the works of Elena Ferrante and Karl Ove Knausgaard. She suspects the familiar tone of both…
Pernicious Individualism
If anything, Emerson’s transparent eyeball is now a webcam hacked by the NSA. Over at Lit Hub, Jonathon Sturgeon writes about the supposedly rampant and undying force of individualism in American…
Not Enough Buzz to Go Around
At Lit Hub, Ilana Masad outlines the importance of publicists in generating buzz for new books in a social media saturated-environment, and the struggle many authors face to generate their…
Lucia Berlin Unplugged
When there’s emotional truth, there follows a rhythm, and I think a beauty of image, because you’re seeing clearly. In 1996 Lucia Berlin’s students Kellie Paluck and Adrian Zupp interviewed…
Notes on Craft
Supposedly, the most-common question for a writer is , “Where do you get your ideas?” but in my experience, it is actually, “Do you outline?” I don’t outline, but I…
Stranger Than Fiction
I read the Assistant Warden’s e-mail four or five times, but I still could not grasp its implications. All I could think about was the ten copies of Toni Morrison’s…
Handling Rejection from the Other Side
I never heard editors talk about how disturbed and insecure writers might become as a result of relentless rejection, living every day with what James Salter called “the feeling of…