The author’s 1992 interview with poet Edward Hirsch.
The Paris Review
Elena Ferrante on the Historic Struggle of Women Writers
INTERVIEWER Do you think female fiction is constitutionally weak? FERRANTE Not at all. I’m talking about my adolescent anxieties. For obvious historical reasons, women’s writing has a less dense and varied tradition than male writing, but it has extremely high points and also an extraordinary foundational value—just think of Jane Austen. The twentieth century, besides, […]
The Craft of Poetry: A Semester with Allen Ginsberg
An intimate recollection of a Beat legend.
The Craft of Poetry: A Semester with Allen Ginsberg
An intimate recollection of a Beat legend.
Toni Morrison on Why Writers Have Such a Hard Time Writing About Sex
Sex is difficult to write about because it’s just not sexy enough. The only way to write about it is not to write much. Let the reader bring his own sexuality into the text. A writer I usually admire has written about sex in the most off-putting way. There is just too much information. If you start saying “the curve of . . .” you soon sound like a gynecologist.
