In 1970, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) sat down for an interview with The Paris Review just months before abandoning his campaign for president, running as the Chilean Communist Party candidate. American author Rita Guibert conducted the interview at Neruda’s home in Isla Negra, just south of Valparaiso: Oh, there is no advice to give to […]
The Paris Review
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
James Salter on Writing and the Open Road
The author’s 1992 interview with poet Edward Hirsch.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
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, […]
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction, Story
The Craft of Poetry: A Semester with Allen Ginsberg
An intimate recollection of a Beat legend.
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction
The Craft of Poetry: A Semester with Allen Ginsberg
An intimate recollection of a Beat legend.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
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.