Turning one’s lived experience into fiction can be a very fruitful exercise, leading the story far from its factual origins, but the need for readers to identify the bits of the author’s real life misses the way fiction can reveal larger truths.
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Posted inStory
‘I’m Always Writing Against This Idea That Denver’s a White Space.’
Kali Fajardo-Anstine talks about her new short story collection “Sabrina & Corina,” her obsession with dualities, and Chicano and Indigenous history in Denver.
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
‘I Spent Two Years Researching Before I Wrote a Single Line’: Geeking Out With Marlon James
Man Booker winner Marlon James immersed himself in African myths and history, so he could use that world as a springboard for a new fantasy series.
Posted inBooks
This Week In Books: The New Lord and Lady of the Apartment
“Infamously … Goethe dismissed the younger writer as diseased.”
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Story
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“The whiteboy said there was nothing left for me in Houston, he said that I didn’t have to punish myself, and he said my name, my actual name.”
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Food, Profiles & Interviews, Story, Writing
Helen Oyeyemi on ‘Gingerbread,’ Fairy Tales, and What Self-Branding Is Doing to Childhood
“I was thinking a lot about childhood as this special status, an almost endangered status … that is eroded the more that we start thinking of ourselves as these units of value and worrying about what we’re worth.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Highlight, Nonfiction, Quote Posts, Quotes
The Early Years of Elif Batuman’s Interest in Russian Authors
How a college student’s scholarly investigation into whether Tolstoy was murdered led to her first book, about the people obsessed with Russian literature.
Posted inNonfiction
Unearthing the Story: An Interview with Peter Hessler
The New Yorker writer describes his career’s circuitous route, from his start as a struggling fiction writer to becoming a China correspondent, and now the author of a new book about the Arab Spring.
Posted inArts & Culture, Nonfiction, Quote Posts, Quotes
Teaching Writing and Breaking Rules
Rules can ruin the kind of exciting language that makes literature rewarding, but some rules also enhance writing. It’s challenging to find the middle ground.
Posted inArts & Culture, Nonfiction, Quotes
Between Jesmyn and Ta-Nehisi
Author Jesmyn Ward sits down with Ta-Nehisi Coates to discuss slavery, superheroes, and how much you have to hate yourself to enjoy being famous.
