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Summer eating competitions in New York earlier this month included both the long-running hot dog eating contest in Coney Island, and a kale eating contest in Buffalo. Imagine that you have to consume one type of food for a ten-minute all-you-can-eat contest—what food would you choose? Write a short essay about how you would prepare physically and psychologically, and recount your favorite memories that involve this food.
"A successful ending is the most important part of a book." Best-selling author Jeffery Deaver shares inspirational quotes from some of his favorite authors and offers his own writing advice on storytelling, editing, and rejection letters.
The forgotten life of H. T. Tsiang; the Strand’s book quiz; an e-mail correspondence between Jonathan Safran Foer and Natalie Portman; and other news.
"Be sure to have at least one good Muslim character, preferably one good for each bad one. People will then say your film or book is 'balanced...'" Moustafa Bayoumi reads aloud eleven tongue-in-cheek rules for writing Muslim characters from his newest book, This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror (NYU Press 2015), at an event at the Asian American Writers' Workshop in New York City.
The new animated film The Secret Life of Pets explores the idea that when human owners are away, household pets shed their conventional façades and get into all sorts of mischief. Think about a pet you’ve owned or one you’ve been acquainted with through someone else, a movie, or a book. Write an essay that first notes the pet’s most readily apparent, idiosyncratic traits and habits, then imagines its secret life. What does the secret life you’ve imagined for the pet reveal about your own behavior when nobody's watching?
Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, best known for his role in the legendary rap group Run-DMC, speaks about growing up in Hollis, Queens and what led him to depression. McDaniels's memoir, Ten Ways Not to Commit Suicide (Amistad, 2016), details his struggles with fame and addiction, and his recovery.
The Irukandji jellyfish, mostly found off the coast of Australia, are the most poisonous box jellyfish, and at one cubic centimeter, also the smallest. Another distinguishing feature is its sting, which produces what scientists call a “feeling of impending doom,” partially caused by venom triggering hormones connected to anxiety. Write a personal essay about a time in your past in which you felt intensely anxious about a situation, and were unfailingly convinced of a negative outcome. What were the circumstances and external factors that led you to this perspective? Did you overcome your fears and emerge from the other side with a new outlook?
"Literature played a profound role in turning my life around, but it was also journaling as well, like being able to really write and ask myself those tough questions..." Shaka Senghor, author of the memoir, Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption in an American Prison (Drop a Gem Publishing, 2013), speaks with Jeffrey Brown about how reading and writing helped him to examine his life, and the need for American citizens to understand the prison system.
"We may use words to break that prison...that is why I wrote that book, and that is why I wrote the others." Elie Wiesel explains his reasons for writing Night (Hill & Wang, 1960), the first in a trilogy of books about his experiences during the Holocaust, and the challenges in getting it published. Wiesel passed away on July 2 at the age of eighty-seven.
"This is what we must do—not to sleep well when people suffer anywhere in the world." Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel speaks about the power of law to change people's lives while accepting the 2012 William O. Douglas Award.
