mcsweeney’s
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This Week in Books: Sorry to Disrupt the Peace
Welcome to This Week in Books, where we highlight books just released by small and independent presses. Books have always been a symbol for and means of spreading knowledge and wisdom, and they are an important part of our toolkit…
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This Week in Essays
Last week was horrible and you need a laugh. Read Kate Washington’s imagined revolutionary National Parks meeting at McSweeney’s. For Longreads, Anjali Enjeti tackles her perceived outsider status, even as a first-generation American-born citizen. Read Davey Davis’s compelling dissection of the body…
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Notable San Francisco: 12/14–12/20
Wednesday 12/14: McSweeney’s presents Emily Carr (Whosoever Has Let a Minotaur Enter Them, or a Sonnet). Free, 7 p.m., Alley Cat Books. Michael Chabon reads from his new book, Moonglow. Free, 7 p.m., Diesel, A Bookstore. Thursday 12/15: Poet and…
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Flipping the Gender Script
Tired of the incessant number of novels describing women in terms of their slender bodies, simple minds, or sexual status? Over at McSweeney’s, read this hilarious satire from Meg Ellison where the gender script is flipped, and men are written…
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The Rumpus Interview with Brian Booker
Brian Booker discusses his debut collection Are You Here For What I’m Here For?, giving characters strange and unusual names, and sleeping sickness.
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John Cheever Could Never Be a Single Mother
John Cheever, known as the “Chekov of the suburbs” for his fiction’s signature focus on the domestic, suburban family life in the 40s and 50s, probably couldn’t hack being a single mom today. At McSweeney’s, Jeanne Darst shares the excerpts from Cheever’s fiction…
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Love Me Tinder
What she felt: nothing, and as he spoke more nothing perched, nested, laid eggs, and caught the avian flu inside her. Riffing on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night, Janelle Blasdel offers a brilliant homage to dating in the…
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Dark Magic Your Way to Better Writing
Are you in a rut with your writing? Blocked for ideas and inspiration? Finding those writing exercises designed to spark your imagination getting a little stale? Try some writing exorcises instead, courtesy of McSweeney’s. A little dark magic might go…
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A Writer’s Per-Hour Salary
What kind of time could be counted towards the work hours of a writer? Does reading count? Drinking the coffee that bestows much-needed energy? Sitting around daydreaming? Read this hilarious piece imagining all the ways writers might log their hours.
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Angry Writers
My point is that she’s a bit of a paradox. Over at McSweeney’s, Amy Watkins explains why George Eliot has every right to be really, really upset.
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A Toast to a Better Life
Now, if you’re thinking, “a toaster is not a good enough reason to continuing living such a futile existence,” then you’ve never experienced the way a piece of golden brown, bread, gently rising from an evenly-heated, cooking chamber, can lift…
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Internet Content Creators Wanted
Have you ever dreamed of being a “writer”? Of course, you have! Doctors don’t make as much as they used to and we no longer go into space! What choice do you have? Besides, math was never really your thing.…