Here are pieces I’ve enjoyed, new and old, about the art and business of book cover design.
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Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Rise of Independent Travel Magazines
Subject matter can be almost self-consciously esoteric. The latest issue of Ernest includes a piece by Queen guitarist Brian May on diableries (19th-century stereoscopic photographs of clay model demons). Cereal has 10 pages on Anglepoise lamps; Avaunt has a feature headlined “Politics of map projections”. The new magazines also move away from the traditional “colonial” […]
Posted inNonfiction
Revisiting the Ghosts of Attica
A wrenching new book recounts the bloodiest prison battle in our history.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Story
Writing Our America
“Despite the headlines that came after the election calling this country ‘Trump’s America’—and there were many—I won’t call it that, or see it that way. And regardless of your politics I’ll ask you to join me. This is our America. It’s our America to write in, and our America to write.”
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How Vanity Fair Protected Their Caitlyn Jenner Exclusive
The magazine was concerned about leaks and took security measures “every step of the way,” including on the photo shoot [where they hired security and confiscated cellphones], in the VF editorial office and at the printing plant for the upcoming issue. The story and pictures were done on a single computer that was never connected […]
Posted inBooks, First Chapters, Nonfiction, Story
Falling in Love with Words: The Secret Life of a Lexicographer
Merriam-Webster lexicographer Kory Stamper describes how she fell in love with words and offers a peek into the complex process of making dictionaries.
Posted inDiscussions, Nonfiction, Quotes, Reading List
On Being Fat
Sara Benincasa’s essay “Why Am I So Fat?” was one of our top five reads last week, and with good reason — it was honest and cutting in all the right ways. It was brash and unapologetic and funny as hell (and also suggests that perhaps Fader was slightly premature in declaring, earlier this year, that […]
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Story
Excerpt: ‘The Red Car’ by Marcy Dermansky
“The car had upset me. Judy had found a parking space right in front of the restaurant and I could see the red car from our table. Taunting me.”
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Quotes
Do Modern Readers Only Want to Read Easy Books?
Dear Thief is, without a doubt, stronger and more raw, the book her fans knew she could write. But just when the world should have behaved as if it had been waiting for that very novel to arrive, Harvey’s career seemed to lose momentum. Her editor Dan Franklin explains, a little despairingly, that “the really […]
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Quotes
Second Chances After Fifty: Jeanette Winterson, in ‘Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?’
Today (October 2, 2015) I turn fifty. This is officially the first age that has freaked me out. Fifty? How can I be fifty? Fifty is how old grandparents are, or how old my grandparents were when I was born, anyway. And I haven’t even been a parent. Fifty is how old Maggie Estep was […]
