On reality, writing, publishing, fiction, non-fiction, Doris Lessing, and femininity: a writer muses on writing that impacted her, and what it means to write fiction at all.
Writing
Posted inEditor's Pick
Writing Our America
“This is our America. It’s our America to write in, and our America to write.” Korb’s essay is adapted from a talk he presented at Pacific University’s MFA in Writing Program. It includes advice from writers of “YA fiction, writers for television and stage, of novels and essays, investigative journalism, and criticism” on how we […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
You Are What You Eat, Or, Haruki Murakami on Food As a Reflection of the Self
At The Awl, Elaheh Nozari explores food in the work of Haruki Murakami: how food not only offers comfort and nutrition, but about how what we eat speaks to our emotional state and who we are as people.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Porochista Khakpour on Starving as a Young Novelist
Lit Hub has a compelling essay by “The Last Illusion” author Porochista Khakpour about her struggle to survive early in her career as a novelist.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Cultural Revolution of Anthony Bourdain
How the chaotic ’70s shaped the food writer’s literary trajectory.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Quotes
Publishing’s New Four-Letter Word
Publishing asks women — but not men — to be nice, as well as talented. Should we ask men to be more nice, or give women the leeway to be less so?
Posted inEditor's Pick
Stop Making Sense, or How to Write in the Age of Trump
An essay on the importance of embracing in literature the conflict and destruction likely to arise in America in the coming four years. The piece is written from the perspective of a Bosnian-born novelist who got stuck in the United States in 1992 because of conflict in his native country that upended everything he felt […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Empathy and Escapism — Obama’s Secret to Surviving the White House Years: Books
At The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani reports on how reading and writing helped President Obama to “slow down and get perspective” from novelists, memoirists, and historical figures during the eight years of his presidency.
Posted inNonfiction
Borges and $: The Parable of the Literary Master and the Coin
Thirty years ago, the world lost a great literary mind—the Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges. Today, Elizabeth Hyde Stevens revisits the financial conditions that produced this life of pure literature, finding unexpected hope in the darkest period of Borges’ forgotten past.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The ‘Airplane!’ Guide to Joke Delivery
The writers of the classic 1980 comedy deconstruct their screenplay for New York magazine.