The Guardian
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Saving William Blake’s House
William Blake lived in a cottage in West Sussex for three years beginning in 1800. Now the cottage is up for sale and the Blake Society wants to save the house for historic purposes. They negotiated a discounted price with…
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Million Word Novel
Author Alan Moore, best known for graphic novels like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and V for Vendetta, has just finished the first draft of his second novel, Jerusalem, a manuscript with a million words. The Guardian reports that Moore’s latest work beats out classic long…
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Little Black Book
Artists Camille Leproust and Andres Ayerbe printed a book on thermal paper — specially treated paper that turns completely black as its slowly heated. The book will be on display at The London Art Book Fair. Other books on display will…
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Writer Reading Grants
Writers often find grants to help them write, but writers also need to read. The Luminaries author Eleanor Catton, last year’s winner of the Man Booker Prize, plans to set money aside to award grants to writers to allow them…
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Are YA Dystopian Novels Breeding Conservatives?
The Harry Potter series might have been helping make young kids more open and accepting of diversity, but a new crop of young adult novels might be push kids in the opposite direction of the political spectrum. Heroines like Katniss…
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Infinite Brickjest
Fascinated by The Brick Bible, Professor Kevin Griffith of Ohio’s Capital University has had his 11-years-old son Sebastian recreating in LEGO bricks 100 scenes from David Foster Wallace’s masterpiece Infinite Jest. Griffith explained to The Guardian: “I would describe a scene to him…
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In Search of Inner Voice
Researches are taking advantage of the Edinburgh International Book Festival to look for the source of authors’ inner voice. Many writers describe hearing characters’ or narrators’ voices speaking to them. The researchers are looking to establish what the inner voice…
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Riskier Books Find Readers
The changing economics of the publishing industry may be hurting profits, but it has also allowed writers room to experiment with new forms that are often more challenging to readers than has been allowable in the past. Instead of meeting…
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Word of the Day: Eidolism
(n.); belief in ghosts; etymology difficult to trace, but typically attributed to the Greek eidolon (“image, apparition, phantom, ghost”) There was something else in the house, unmentioned and unlabelled. A sort of shadowy presence that hovered by the back door.…
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Author Selling Postcards Written in Blood
Writing a novel requires plenty of time, and Irish author Julian Gough is hoping to fund that time with a Kickstarter campaign he has dubbed Litcoin. For small amounts of money, Gough will send contributors postcards stained with whiskey, coffee,…
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Amazon vs. Authors: A Rumpus Roundup
More than 900 authors signed a full-page New York Times advertisement scolding Amazon for drawing them into their continuing fight with publisher Hachette. The ad has drawn the ire of self-published authors who see traditional publishing houses as gatekeepers protecting…
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Literary Namesakes
Sometimes, an eponym has a literary origin from a famous character. Over at the Guardian, Paul Anthony Jones takes us on a tour of literary eponyms and introduces us to the original brainiac, gargantuan, and svengali.