An excerpt from the 1970 novel by Paula Fox: Status-conscious Sophie and Otto Bentwood attend a dinner party in Brooklyn Heights in the late sixties, shortly after Sophie sustains a bite on her hand from a stray cat.
Books
Posted inFiction, Story
Desperate Characters
An excerpt from the 1970 novel by Paula Fox: Status-conscious Sophie and Otto Bentwood attend a dinner party in Brooklyn Heights in the late sixties, shortly after Sophie sustains a bite on her hand from a stray cat.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
Love, Identity, and Genderqueer Family Making
An excerpt from Maggie Nelson’s ‘The Argonauts’.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
E.L. Doctorow: 1931-2015
INTERVIEWER Isn’t there an enormous temptation as a fiction writer to take scenes out of history, since you do rely on that so much, and fiddle with them just a little bit? DOCTOROW Well, it’s nothing new, you know. I myself like the way Shakespeare fiddles with history; and Tolstoy. In this country we tend […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
A Black Woman’s Body on the Tennis Court: Claudia Rankine on Serena Williams
What does a victorious or defeated black woman’s body in a historically white space look like? Serena and her big sister Venus Williams brought to mind Zora Neale Hurston’s “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.” This appropriated line, stenciled on canvas by Glenn Ligon, who used plastic letter […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
What Etgar Keret Learned About Storytelling from His Father
Author Etgar Keret’s new memoir, The Seven Good Years, chronicles the time between the birth of his son and the death of his father. Keret’s parents were both Holocaust survivors, and in an interview with Fresh Air, Keret said that experience shaped his father’s stories: My father was very charismatic and a very good storyteller […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
‘Station Eleven’ Author Emily St. John Mandel on Finally Quitting Her Day Job
Station Eleven author Emily St. John Mandel recently tweeted that she’d quit her day job—something she’d been unable to do for years before the success of her highly acclaimed fourth novel, which was nominated for a National Book Award, among other prizes. In interviews over the years, Mandel has talked about her necessity for at […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quote Posts, Reading List
The Art and Business of Book Covers
Here are pieces I’ve enjoyed, new and old, about the art and business of book cover design.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
The Art and Business of Book Covers
Here are pieces I’ve enjoyed, new and old, about the art and business of book cover design.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes, Unapologetic Women
The Secret to Honesty in Writing
“It didn’t occur to me that my books would be widely read at all, and that enabled me to write anything I wanted to. And even once I realized that they were being read, I still wrote as if I were writing in secret.” –Author Louise Erdrich, in the Paris Review. Read the interview