names

  • What’s in a Name?

    But as writers, what are we supposed to do if we have a super common name? Do we get a pen name? Do we find an SEO expert? Do we just kind of ignore the issue and hope our names…

  • Michael Derrick Hudson, Before You Steal My Chinese Name

    Michael Derrick Hudson, Before You Steal My Chinese Name

    Know that you are trying to steal from a naming ritual and culture that goes back five thousand years.

  • The Conversation: Jeremy Clark and Thiahera Nurse

    The Conversation: Jeremy Clark and Thiahera Nurse

    I’m thinking about the difference between “I stay somewhere” and “I live somewhere.”

  • A Character By Any Other Name

    Over at the New Yorker, Sam Sacks considers why “in recent years, a curious number of novelists have declined to avail themselves of that basic prerogative: naming their creations,” letting a deluge of nameless characters emerge.

  • Funny Names Are Serious Business

    Names play an important role in defining characters and can inform readers of what they should expect from a text. But not all names need to be serious—indeed, for much of the last century, comedic names have been preferred.

  • Word of the Day: Euonymous

    (adj.); having a well or suitable name From Dickens with his bitter Gradgrind to J. K. Rowling with her sour Voldemort, authors have long understood that names help establish character. —Neal Gabler, from “The Weird Science of Naming Things” A rose…

  • The White One in the Woods

    The White One in the Woods

    Last summer was a difficult season, the worst I’ve had in years. I bloodied an eye from weeping, capillaries branching like red vines around the hazel nest where my pupil gleams like a black egg.

  • By Any Other Name

    I try to be open about who I am.  I’m not interested in having a blank slate; I’d rather everyone just know what’s on mine. Maybe people think I’m hiding from my past by being Anna. No, far from it.…