Answer Songs: Music as Muse
A songwriter responds to literature—such as stories by Jonathan Lethem and George Saunders—with music, carrying the creative conversation across art forms.
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Tags: creative process
Typewriters in the 21st Century
Innovations like the USB Typewriter, Hanx Writer, Hemingwrite, and Typing Writer are giving new life to the classic typewriter by updating it for the digital world.
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The Written Image: Sorted Books
In her Sorted Books project, Nina Katchadourian arranges books from libraries—including William S. Burroughs’s personal collection, as well as those housed in museums and galleries across the country, to find a kind of poetry in the spines.
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Ethnicity and Craft: Creating Characters, not Caricatures
A writer and editor shares her thoughts, as well as lessons learned from authors such as Junot Díaz, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Celeste Ng, on writing of and from a culture that may be foreign to the reader: what do we explain, italicize, or translate? How do we navigate the divide between the ethnicity of a writer or character and that of her audience?
Feckless Pondering: Emotional Beats and the Art of Repose
A case for balancing action with introspection in fiction, in order to avoid “gumming up the gears of your story.”
Why We Write: Going Back to Where It Was
After finding him paging through her diary, a mother confronts the ethical and emotional struggles of writing about her son’s traumatic brain injury.
Art Vs. Life: A Quarrel Between David Shields and Caleb Powell
What comes first—the human or the writer? David Shields and Caleb Powell discuss the origins and collaborative process behind the four-day argument about life and art that became their new book (and film), I Think You’re Totally Wrong: A Quarrel.
More Ideas Faster: Writing With Abandon
A writer learns that letting go of the need for perfectionism and allowing the creative impulse to guide the mind fluidly and freely can revitalize the practice of writing.
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Ferguson Public Library Sees Donations Spike, James Patterson Campaigns Against Reader Apathy, and More
PEN American Center’s Human Rights Day event; Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems reissued; poet Heather McHugh’s nonprofit; and other news.
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