For those interested in origin stories, posthumous literary gossip, and New York City in the 1930s, look no further than Mary McCarthy’s Intellectual Memoirs (1992) – a candid and lively account of McCarthy’s early writing career and the intellectual and political scenes that fueled it. McCarthy’s observations are sharp and often quite searing; she spares no […]
memoir
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Quotes
Troy James Weaver on Pleasure and Shame in Cross-Dressing as a Young Boy
So we were in the food court eating chili dogs and my dad was smoking his cigarettes and drinking a cup of coffee…Then, out of nowhere, my friend started blushing, eyes fixed to his plate, very clearly distraught, so my dad asked him: What’s the problem? And my friend, he said: That lady looks like […]
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
Everything You Ever Wanted
“I know what’s the best choice for me, but I am honestly not sure what’s the best choice for him. How is a mother ever supposed to know that?”
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Thought Catalog and First-Person Essay Industrial Complex
And it has predicted a remarkable rise in juicy, first-person writing on the Internet. Consider the success of xoJane, which launched in 2011, or of The Washington Post’s “PostEverything” blog. On Medium.com and Jezebel, memoirish personal essays win big. CNN ramped up its “First Person” project in 2013. And Vox.com just recently followed suit. As of press time, the Ezra […]
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
The Perils of Writing About Your Own Family: A Conversation with George Hodgman
“Memoir is a total minefield, as you know. It’s best if you write the book and leave the country.”
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Profiles & Interviews
The Perils of Writing About Your Own Family: A Conversation with George Hodgman
“Memoir is a total minefield, as you know. It’s best if you write the book and leave the country.”
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Quotes
How Literature Gave Us Spock
There is a moment when we are all touched by the humanity in these creatures that are supposedly inhuman, when the character, Spock, the Frankenstein monster, or Quasimodo, says, “I, too, need love.” Millions respond and love pours out because we all need it and we all understand. When one is touched, by a flower […]
Posted inNonfiction, Story
Kitchen Rhythm: A Year in a Parisian Pâtisserie
An Oxford grad learns to navigate boiling sugar, sleep deprivation, and exacting pastry chefs with whom she can barely communicate.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How a Black German Woman Discovered Her Grandfather Was a Nazi
“The first shock was the sheer discovery of a book about my mother and my family, which had information about me and my identity that had been kept hidden from me,” Teege says. “I knew almost nothing about the life of my biological mother, nor did my adoptive family. I hoped to find answers to questions that had disturbed me and to the depression I had suffered from. The second shock was the information about my grandfather’s deeds.”
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How Tolstoy’s Writing Mirrored His Own Life
There are a number of reasons a writer may waffle on the question of which events in the book match up with her life. Most writers receive the question of whether something in their fiction “really happened” as an accusation, without being exactly sure what they are being accused of. There can be the egotistical […]