mcsweeney’s
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“Don’t Go Online” and Other Good Advice for Writers
Curtis Sittenfeld, author of Sisterland and guest judge of McSweeney’s first-ever student short story contest, told McSweeney’s in an interview that she is looking for fiction with a “pulse,” that engages “in a kind of conversation,” and that serves the…
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Word of the Day: Logodaedaly
(n.); cunning in words; skill in adorning speech; the arbitrary or capricious coinage of words; from late Latin and Greek, log (“speech, word”) and daidalos (“skillful, ingeniously formed) Every society we’ve ever known has had poetry, and should the day…
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Fire All the Jugglers
This is the biggest thing, we gotta appeal to sesquicentennials. You know who I’m talkin’ about, these youngsters that have been coming of age in the 1910s and 1920s. They’re obsessed with what’s current and modern. They have at least…
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Summer Days Are Here
It’s Friday! And it’s the summer! Are you sitting in your cubicle feeling the same joy Kassia Miller writes about at McSweeney’s? And when it’s summer in the office, I get to break out all my favorite summer clothes: my…
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And the Winner of Best Premise Award Goes to…
Debuting what is surely one of the longer titles in literary history, Bethany Billman has published a piece called, “Lost Scenes from Generic Hipster Indie Romance Films Found in 2076 During a Museum Restoration of an Old MacBook Air and…
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Another Unpopular Proverb
Popular novelist Teddy Wayne’s latest entry in his series of proverbs for McSweeney’s is called “Thought.” No, not the deep kind. Read it here.
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A Hard Job to Imagine
It’s sometimes hard to imagine the life of the road-tarer or the elephant waste remover. Here’s to an unsung hero the world wouldn’t be the same without. Point is, no matter how long I been doing this or how I…
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Dialogue with an Astronaut
When I started the book, I hadn’t planned on it being only dialogue. I knew it would be primarily a series of interviews, or interrogations, but I figured there would be some interstitial text of some kind. But then as…
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The Rumpus Interview with Corinne Goria
Author and veteran Voice of Witness editor Peter Orner sits down with Invisible Hands: Voices From the Global Economy editor Corinne Goria to talk about putting the book together, economic interdependency, and the complex human stories behind everyday items.
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Free Piano, Williamsburg
If anybody is in need of a free piano, please see this ad. Although be wary. Keep an eye on your genitalia. On JULY 4TH 2012, at approximately 4 pm my GRANDMOTHER DIED while playing “You’re a Grand Old Flag”…
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This Totally Sounds Like That One Play
VLAD: (points at ESTHER’s legs) What’s with the leg warmers? ESTHER: What do you mean? VLAD: I’ve never seen you wear them. ESTHER: I don’t know what to tell you. They’re warm. Can you help me with this? (With VLAD’s…