“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.”
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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, 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, 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 inEditor's Pick
Smoking Cigarettes Saved My Life
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.
Posted inBooks, Fiction, History, Profiles & Interviews, Science & Nature, Story
Namwali Serpell on Doing the Responsible Thing — Writing an Irresponsible Novel
“I joke that this is the great Zambian novel you didn’t know you were waiting for.”
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 inBooks, Fiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
Joe Scapellato on “The Made-Up Man” and the Myth of the Self
In Scapellato’s new novel, a man is pulled into a noir detective mystery he doesn’t want to solve.
