Data journalist Ben Blatt takes his a mathematical approach to the writers of fiction.
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Posted inArts & Culture, Essays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Sports, Story
Smell, Memory
Perfumers evoke the elegance of an imagined tennis game, not the stench of a real one.
Posted inBooks, Science & Nature
Kim Stanley Robinson’s Cheerful Novel of Climate Change
The sci-fi writer explains how his city-dwellers learn to survive and thrive after a climate-change catastrophe.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Elizabeth Wurtzel Interview
Singer-songwriter Liz Phair interviews author Elizabeth Wurtzel on the occasion of the 20-year reissuing of Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America, originally published in 1997. The two discuss writing memoir vs. writing fiction (Phair herself is at work on a novel and a book of linked essays), feminism, motherhood, and music.
Posted inFiction, Writing
Why We Still Can’t Quit F. Scott Fitzgerald
With a new “lost” short story published by The New Yorker, the bottle is just about dry.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Story
Trouble
Two women share a history of daring, of lost direction, of dark bedrooms, and an enforced silence they finally break.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Steven’s First Limo Ride
Steven is both the young protagonist’s stuffed frog and new little brother in this piece of short fiction about a troubled family, told from the blunt, optimistic point of view of a 10-year-old.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books, Nonfiction, Story
Writing for the Movies: A Letter from Hollywood, 1962
In this classic essay about a classic American art form, legendary screenwriter Daniel Fuchs reflects on his lifetime learning the trade.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
The Cowboy Image and the Growth of Western Music
How did cowboy hats and boots become the visual iconography of American rural music?
Posted inBooks, History, Nonfiction, Story, Writing
Stalin’s Scheherazade
An opportunistic literary caper became a lifelong con — with no possibility of escape.
