Gathered by Mandi Casolo An exhausting, if not exhaustive, meta-list of writing rules from writers including Margaret Atwood’s “Do back exercises,” and “Take something to write on. Paper is good. In a pinch, pieces of wood or your arm will do.” In the helpful spirit, Kurt Vonnegut gives eight tips in his own voice, such as […]
Well, kids, it’s October. Before you get all excited about dressing up, down, or sideways in your fancy Halloween costumes at the end of the month, I think we all need to sit down and have a talk. First off, eat your vegetables. It’s important. Second, we need to address a serious lack of culture […]
After a year on the job, our fiction editor, Steven Schwartz, offers some reflections on submitting stories. Reasons we accept stories: You had us at the title. (Okay, the first sentence.) * Not a cliché to be found, not even close; indeed, the authority of the voice feels immune to the very idea of […]
Gathered by Mandi Casolo Chicago designer Jenny Volvoski reads a book and re-creates its cover art with challenging color and type limitations. While a theme of green, black, and white unifies the covers into a series, “Cover to Cover,” each cover is imagined in the individual likeness of its story. After hemming and hawing and […]
Gathered by Mandi Casolo Hang on to your hats: After cryptically tip-toeing around with Gathering Blue and The Messenger, Lois Lowry has at last written a sequel to The Giver, the dystopian young adult novel that first captured our hearts for euthanasia and terror regimes in sixth grade. Behold Son. There are so many avenues […]
Gathered by Mandi Casolo J.K. Rowling’s first adult novel, The Casual Vacancy, released on Sept. 26th. If you didn’t preorder it, shame on you. The Daily Beast gives a first look into the “viciousness of Rowling’s new fictional village.” “Literary Buroughs”, a Ploughshares series’ exploring the local literary community, highlights Great Falls, MT: where […]
Gathered by Mandi Casolo If you’re in or near the Big Apple, make sure you swing by the Brooklyn Book Fest this weekend, September 23rd. It’s like a rock concert of writers: Joyce Carol Oates, Billy Collins, and Tony Danza, oh my! Brooklyn Book Fest banners are displayed on the columns of the NYPL in […]
Well, kids, it’s back to school season, which can mean only one thing: it’s time for me to box up all of my white Ocean Pacific T-shirts and store them upstairs in the attic until spring. And speaking of attics, hey, James Henry Knippen was kind enough to record his poem “Attic” for Selections from […]
The air conditioning in my car is broken, and the Miami Heat are in the NBA playoffs. That can only mean two things: it’s getting warmer, and my life is a little unfortunate right now. If you’re like me and can’t stand the heat, not only should you get out of the kitchen, you should […]
We took a month off, and we’re sorry. We took a month off because we had to, because we sat on the couch too long and ate too many Cheetos—whole bags of them at a time—and the comfortable couch and delicious snacks made us doughy and lazy. And for that, we’re sorry. But sometime around […]
