Over at The Butter, Grace Talusan has published this moving essay about becoming obsessed with making yogurt from scratch–while on a Fulbright Scholarship in her native Manila–as a way to distract herself from feeling helpless in the face of poor children she came upon who were living in horrible conditions, plus her own infertility and […]
Sari Botton
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Quotes
Phoebe Gloeckner on ‘The Diary of a Teenage Girl’ and the Women of Juarez
At The Rumpus, Whitney Joiner recently interviewed Phoebe Gloeckner, author of The Diary of a Teenage Girl, the controversial illustrated novel about a girl who loses her virginity to her mother’s boyfriend, originally published in 2002, and just made into a feature film. It was the second time Gloeckner sat down with Joiner—a senior features […]
Posted inUncategorized
‘The Fight Is Yours’: Roxane Gay & Ta-Nehisi Coates on Writing and Talking About Race
RG: Discussions about race, particularly in mixed company, are often combative and contentious. How the hell do we talk about race? TC: No idea. I just try to communicate with as much honesty and respect as possible. I think we should not forget that a not so insufficient portion of this country sees it as […]
Posted inFiction, Quotes
‘Puro Amor’: A New Short Story by Sandra Cisneros
The truth was that the Mister had always been dishonest. Not with his feelings but with his heart. He would be the first to tell you how honest he was about his dishonesties. He was like a chronic bed-wetter; he could not control himself. He would always be a bed-wetter even if he were not […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Joyce Maynard on Taking James Patterson’s Online Course in Writing Bestsellers
Lately, just about every time I turn to Facebook or Twitter, I’m greeted by an ad or sponsored content about the online writing course bestselling thriller author James Patterson offers on the MasterClass site (where Dustin Hoffman, Annie Liebovitz, Usher, Serena Williams and others serve up the tricks to their trades, too). “Set out to […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Lidia Yuknavitch on Mythologies We Adopt to Make Sense of Violence
Lidia Yuknavitch, author of the acclaimed new novel The Small Backs of Children, has a haunting essay up at Guernica about “Laume,” a mythological water spirit and guardian of all children that her Lithuanian grandmother introduced her to when she was young, and about the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of violence and […]
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Quotes
At Guernica, an Excerpt of Annie Liontas’s Debut Novel
That night, the whole village watching, Stavros Stavros finally proved his manhood: on the dance floor. With the pomp of the traditional syrtos that suggested respite before battle, the resting of the soul, he rejected the pappas’s interference, his mother’s control, his father’s weakness. When he felt like showing off, he showed off. During one […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Backlash: Richard Bernstein on the New York Times’ Nail Salons Exposé
At The New York Review of Books, former New York Times reporter—and current salon co-owner—Richard Bernstein takes the paper to task for its much-talked-about two–part 7000-word exposé on the exploitation and abuse of employees at nail salons in New York City. He says the article—which led to a state-wide investigation and a new law instituted […]
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Profiles & Interviews
‘The Truth of Life’: Paula Fox on the Re- (Re-) Release of Her 1970 Novel
Sari Botton talks to Paula Fox about Fox’s 1970 novel “Desperate Characters.”
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
‘The Truth of Life’: Paula Fox on the Re- (Re-) Release of Her 1970 Novel
Sari Botton talks to Paula Fox about Fox’s 1970 novel “Desperate Characters.”