Exilium Vita Est: The Island Home of Victor Hugo By Emma Jacobs Feature Emma Jacobs takes us on an illustrated journey of Hugo’s writing life in exile on Guernsey, where he completed Les Misérables.
‘I’m Incredulous That People Do This Repeatedly. The Second Book Thing Is So Real.’ By Zan Romanoff Feature Mary H.K. Choi discusses her latest novel, which examines how “holograms and digital envoys” represent us online, and why it feels like her “second book signals the death of my first.”
‘Nobody in This Book Is Going to Catch a Break’: Téa Obreht on “Inland” By Ryan Chapman Feature ‘The history of the West is a deeply turbulent one… that kept the living population in a constant state of unrest. I thought this constant state of unrest must be true for the dead as well.’
Shapes of Native Nonfiction: ‘The Basket Isn’t a Metaphor, It’s an Example’ By Colin Dickey Feature The editors of “Shapes of Native Nonfiction” talk about the craft of writing, the politics of metaphor, and resisting the exploitation of trauma.
Workshopping Workshop: A Reading List By Jacqueline Alnes Reading List “In workshop, what, if anything, can be written on a syllabus or spoken aloud in class to ensure that each and every participant’s work is read with care?”
‘My Teachers Said We Weren’t Allowed To Use Them.’ By Tobias Carroll Feature How Cecelia Watson learned to stop worrying and love the semicolon.
‘I Surprise Myself With This Refusal To Let Go’: Kate Zambreno on the ‘Ghostly Correspondence’ By Tobias Carroll Feature “I thought for sure, I’ll never write about Rilke again. I’m done with Rilke! I’m sick of Rilke! Rilke — no more. But then the other day … I just started researching something about Rilke.”
The First Book By Sarah Menkedick Feature Eleven women writers on this apocryphal publishing milestone.
Who Do You Belong To? By Emily Lackey Feature When she dipped her heart into someone else’s relationship, Emily Lackey discovered how to define love on her own terms.
Game of Crones By Laura Lippman Feature It wasn’t entirely Laura Lippman’s idea to become a mother in her 50s. But when it happened, she leaned in hard.
The Women Characters Rarely End Up Free: Remembering Rachel Ingalls By Ruby Brunton Feature The recently re-appreciated novelist Rachel Ingalls passed away last month. She was among a cohort of twentieth-century women writers who were ‘famous for not being famous.’
MACHO: On Black Holes, and the Fantasies of Men By Frances Dodds Feature Frances Dodds recalls two men who laid bare the fragile lines between desire, pain and manipulation — and questions the framework of her own fantasies.
If Following McMillan Cottom and Gay on Twitter Isn’t Enough, Here You Go By Michelle Weber Highlight More of this sort of thing, thanks.
Our Words Will Save Us and Set Us Free By Jackson Bliss Feature In the wake of having his writing career belittled, Jackson Bliss becomes an interpreter for a refugee and comes to see words, translations, and storytelling as important acts of resistance.
‘In a Marriage, You Grow Around Each Other’: An Interview with Tessa Hadley By Sarah Boon Feature Tessa Hadley on gaining the sense of authority she needed to write fiction, the authors whose work opens the door for her to write, and the way we are formed by our connections with other people.
On the Books We Choose and Those We Don’t By Krista Stevens Highlight “All the people you could have been had you chosen differently—they haunt the bookstore alongside the person you became and could still become.”
The Need for Distance: Jaclyn Gilbert on Writing and Running By Jacqueline Alnes Feature For author Jaclyn Gilbert, revising her writing is much like doing the same running loops over and over, to the point where she doesn’t have to think about where she’s going anymore.
Writing to Avoid Erasure By Aram Mrjoian Feature After finding a note left by his grandfather, Aram Mrjoian considers how writing about the Armenian diaspora could help prevent history from being forgotten.
‘Emerging’ as a Writer — After 40 By Jenny Bhatt Feature Jenny Bhatt recalls the rites of passage that led to her shift in identity from corporate executive to woman writer of color.
Remembering Ntozake Shange By Danielle Jackson Commentary The poet, novelist, and playwright Ntozake Shange died Saturday, October 27.
Reading with Kiese Laymon’s “Heavy” By Danielle Jackson Commentary “Heavy” confronts generations of Black art.
Finding Time to Write Even During the Busiest of Times By Sari Botton Highlight How Jami Attenberg helped form a supportive online literary community with #1000WordsofSummer.
The Slow Regard of a Difficult Past By Krista Stevens Highlight “In my family, love was the slow accumulation of moments in which I was not subjected to great harm.”
Your Best Work Comes from Scaring Yourself By Ryan Chapman Feature Essayist Chelsea Hodson had to give herself permission to be uncomfortable.
Arundhati Roy: “Fiction is a Universe” By Michelle Weber Highlight Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy is the embodiment of concept that the personal is political, even (especially?) in her fiction.
Author Carmen Maria Machado on the Next Phase of #MeToo By Danielle Jackson Highlight Carmen Maria Machado discusses the nuances of “benevolent sexism,” who gets to define the #MeToo movement, and how it should progress.
Dorothy Allison on how Shame Defines Class By Krista Stevens Highlight “What seemed to me life-saving was that I couldn’t lie. I couldn’t put a candy-coated gloss on anything.”
Anthony Bourdain and the Missing Piece By Ian Frisch Feature With magic, the goal is to give someone something they can carry around with them for a while.
For Me, With Love and Squalor By Lauren Markham Feature After publishing her first book, Lauren Markham begins the long search for what she truly wanted after writing it.
The Whole World is Naples Now By Michelle Weber Highlight Sprawling, crumbling, beautiful, rough — Elena Ferrante’s Naples shows us the world’s violent underbelly, with no pretense.
