Jump to navigation Skip to content
In light of 2012 marking the two hundredth anniversary of the births of Robert Browning, Charles Dickens, and Edward Lear, the Guardian examines the literary afterlife; Studs Terkel would have turned one hundred yesterday, and the city of Chicago is celebrating the occasion; the New Yorker considers Get Your War On author David Rees’s business of artisanal pencil sharpening; and other news.
This animated short film based on Leni Zumas's first novel, The Listeners, published by Tin House Books this month, features art and animation by Luca Dipierro and music by Father Murphy. Zumas was featured in the magazine's First Fiction Annual back in 2008 for her debut story collection, Farewell Navigator (Open City Books).
Choose a topic that interests you—it could be an animal, a scientific process, or a historical event, for example—and research it. Next, think of an unrelated experience from your life—a particularly memorable moment from childhood, perhaps, or when a loved one passed away—and write an essay on the two subjects. Alternate between short paragraphs of factual reportage on the topic and brief, more lyrical vignettes about the remembered experience, with the end goal of finding a way to relate the two.
Famed novelist Carlos Fuentes passed away Tuesday in Mexico City. He was eighty-three; the Guardian looks at the legacy of the great John Updike; a former pharmaceutical executive, Andrew G. Bodnar, convicted of a white-collar crime, was sentenced to write a book; and other news.
Pick an overlooked, everyday object—a scarf, a carton of strawberries, a snow globe—and write eight different scenes or vignettes in which that object appears centrally. Have each scene take place in a different location and have the characters interact with the object in various ways.
This video, produced by AARP last year, takes a look at the life of celebrated novelist Carlos Fuentes, who died on Tuesday in Mexico City. He was eighty-three. Fuentes was the author of more than twenty books, including the novel Destiny and Desire, which was translated by Edith Grossman and published by Random House last January.
If you were unable to attend Barney Rosset's memorial at Cooper Union's Great Hall in New York City last week, Evergreen Review has posted remembrances; the New Yorker has introduced Page-Turner, a new daily books blog; Alice Bolin visits the Montana grave of poet Richard Hugo; and other news.
This short film, starring comedian and author Mike Birbiglia and "Fresh Air" host Terry Gross, was part of last week's live "This American Life" show that was seen in movie theaters across the country. Birbiglia's 2010 book, Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories, was made into a movie that will be released by IFC Films this fall.
Make a list of commonly used phrases or idioms (e.g. “don't let the cat out of the bag,” “beat a dead horse,” “no strings attached”). Choose one or two and examine them closely, particularly their literal meaning. Write a poem in which at least one line attempts to reveal the strangeness of a commonly used idiom. Read Dora Malech’s “Love Poem” for inspiration.
