Jump to navigation Skip to content
University of Akron Press “transitional” director appointed; David Foster Wallace’s “bro-lit” irony; Murakami’s answers to fan queries published as giant e-book; and other news.
"The material for a novel is very often like tinder in your mind and in your heart, waiting for a spark to be thrown onto it." Andrew O'Hagan recounts the inspiration behind his newest novel, The Illuminations (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), which is longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize.
Think of a situation from your past when you were unsure of what to do and wished for someone's advice or opinion. Describe the scenario and ask specific questions about your next course of action, as if you were posing the issue to an advice columnist. Then, write an essay in the form of an advice column response to yourself. Analyze the situation objectively—cite relevant anecdotes, examples, or hypothetical outcomes—and share words of guidance, insight, and encouragement with your past self.
Ukraine’s literary scene; early J. R. R. Tolkien story to be published for the first time; Florida high school removes book from summer reading list after parents complain; and other news.
Steph Cha speaks about the noir works that influenced her writing and her choice to feature a female protagonist. Cha's novel Dead Soon Enough, the third installment in the Juniper Song series, was published yesterday by Minotaur Books.
"This collection is founded on the idea that it's worth trying to write about race, again—in particular that something valuable happens when an individual writer reflects on race in the making of creative work." In 2011 Claudia Rankine created Open Letter, an online forum about race and the art of writing that elicited responses from a diverse group of artists and writers. In this anthology, authors such as Simone White, Francisco Aragón, Bhanu Kapil, Dawn Lundy Martin, and many others offer their responses, filled with their own experiences, questions, and convictions. The result is a vital conversation on a range of topics including depictions of social and racial identity; race, feminism, and creative spaces; and "the white imaginary."
In modern storytelling, a deus ex machina is a plot device in which a dramatic and oftentimes contrived occurrence suddenly saves the day or solves a seemingly impossible problem. This week, write a short story using this device in the form of a character, object, or newfound ability. How will you manipulate the pacing to create the most effective sense of surprise? Consider the tone of the story, perhaps incorporating tragedy and comedy, as you lead up to the unexpected turn of events.
Authors reflect on the #BlackLivesMatter movement; Elizabeth Alexander on writing through grief; writers respond to works at Storylines Guggenheim exhibit; and other news.
Mary Norris, New Yorker copy editor and author of Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen (Norton, 2015), talks about commas in this episode of a new video series from the New Yorker.
This week, encourage someone close to you to collaborate on writing a poem. Together, choose a subject—it can be a shared experience, a mutual friend or loved one, or a place familiar to you both—and then separately, write a short poem on the chosen subject from the first-person perspective. Finally, work together on the editing process, combining the two poems by interweaving lines and stanzas, and formulating a collective rhythm. For inspiration, read "Two Fathers" by Lois Baer Barr and Ellen Birkett Morris.
