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Choose an incident from your past—it could be an ordinary occurrence, such as a family dinner—or a significant event, such as an achievement or a mishap. Write about it from your perspective, then write about it from the perspective of someone else who experienced it with you—a friend, sibling, or parent.
“I read contemporary writers, and, since I'm writing nonfiction these days, I tend to read memoir. I also try to reread, pulling some Chekov, Flannery O'Connor or Virginia Woolf down from the shelf. My favorite book is usually the most recent book I've read, and the last book I read in 2011 was The Free World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011) by David Bezmozgis, a surprise choice by a member of our small Jewish book group. None of us except the person who chose the novel had heard of Bezmozgis.
The Broken Tower, the Hart Crane biopic writen, directed, and starring James Franco, was released this week and can now be downloaded or viewed on demand. There's been a lot of speculation about the film ever since Franco aquired the rights to Paul Mariani's biography of the same title, but at least one critic isn't impressed. Writing in Slate, Evan Hughes called the film "incredibly dull."
An Arizona school district has banned a long list of books, including Mexican-American history textbooks, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest; Ezra Pound's daughter is suing an Italian neo-fascist group who've named themselves CasaPound; GalleyCat reports on what editors are looking for in 2012; and other news.
“My favorite book of 2011 was ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’ by Rebecca Skloot (Crown, 2010). I read the book in three days during a trip to Mexico over the summer, and I embodied the ‘could-not-put-it-down’ cliché. I brought the book with me to meals and read it while eating. I sat in a room by myself for hours with this book, ignoring the beach, the sun, and all human contact. Skloot tells the story of Henrietta Lacks, a black woman whose cancerous cells were taken from her without her knowledge in the 1950s.
Did you read the latest issue of Poets & Writers Magazine? Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein star in Portlandia, currently in its second season on the Independent Film Channel.
Take a poem you feel is finished, and divide the poem in half. Write two new poems by filling in those two halves.
"I have been a huge fan of Chris Bachelder for years, ever since happening upon a copy of his wonderful road trip epic Bear v. Shark (Scribner, 2002). U.S.! is both a post modern look at disintegrating socialist dreams as well a truly enjoyable parody of political thrillers.The plot loosely follows various characters in their attempts to physically revive Upton Sinclair from the dead, who then work with the zombie Sinclair to advance Utopian ideals.
J.A. Konrath announced his e-books alone garnered $100,000 in three weeks; GalleyCat offers a reading list to supplement your viewing of Downton Abbey; the New York Times reviews An Informal History of the Peace Eye Bookstore, the ____ You Press, the Fugs, and Counterculture in the Lower East Side by musician and poet Ed Sanders; and other news.
“I found Carol Shields’s Unless (Fourth Estate, 2002) at our local Friends of the Library used-book sale fund-raiser. I recognized Shields as the author of a novel I had really enjoyed back in the early nineties—The Stone Diaries (Viking, 1993). I knew anything written by her would be a treasure and I was not disappointed. A rush of storytelling, like a wave crashing upon an empty beach at dawn, suddenly the reader is pulled under and moving with the tide.
