Elon Green Speaks With Gay Talese, What Makes a Good Story, and More

by
Evan Smith Rakoff
10.9.13

Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—from publishing reports to academic announcements to literary dispatches—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today’s stories:

Amazon intends to build a distribution center in Kenosha, Wisconsin, which will employ at least eleven hundred people. (Shelf Awareness)

Rumors abound that Apple intends to produce a larger iPhone, what is known as a “phablet.” (Forbes)

Meanwhile, a new study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development indicates the reading skills of adults in the United States are “significantly lower than those of adults in most other developed countries.” (Los Angeles Times)

Editor and author Heidi Pitlor explains what makes a good short story. (Huffington Post)

And Fast Company gathers storytelling tips from Neil Gaiman, Charles Yu, Jeff Vandermeer, and others.

Elon Green interviews Gay Talese about his famed 1966 essay for Esquire, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.” (Nieman Storyboard)

George Saunders spoke with Deborah Treisman (the New Yorker’s fiction editor) at the recent New Yorker Festival—Saunders details how he left a career as an engineer to write and teach.

Walter Skold founded the Dead Poets Society of America in 2009, and so far has visited the graves of three hundred poets. (Huffington Post)