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Showing 3552 Columns
June 24th, 2019
Someone once told me, a monster is a god without followers, and I think about that often, because it means what we find horrifying is about perspective. A lot of popcorn thrillers would be horror movies if we showed people going into shock and bleeding out after being shot, people's bones breaking or flying out the windshield when they got hit in a car chase, or how people's lives were destroyed after the heroes blew up buildings. Zoom into a beautiful body, and you'll find grotesque processes going on inside the invisible dark underneath the skin.
Read Column →June 21st, 2019
Photo by Magda Ehlers Listen, we needed panels about diversity. We needed them because literature was stuck in the past and, to be honest, it was racist. We needed them because people of color, LGBTQIA folks, and women weren't being invited to speak at conferences. We needed them because diverse voices and experiences were required to expand literature's horizon and help readers feel represented. The list of reasons goes on and on.
Read Column →June 20th, 2019
Endings are hard. Ask any author what the most difficult part of their job is, and I guarantee “writing endings” is the answer. It demands a perfect balancing act. Your ending must reflect the hero’s entire journey in microcosm and revisit the major themes without getting repetitive. It also has to be surprising yet plausible, so the audience doesn’t see it coming, but still accepts it as a reasonable conclusion. Never mind the cover—most readers will judge your book by its ending.
Read Column →June 19th, 2019
Pick up Redwall in any bookstore, and you might be bemused by the scene on its cover. After all, it’s a funny-looking mouse standing in front of a castle, waving a tiny sword in the air. But this is one book you shouldn’t judge by its cover — it’s the first installment in one of the greatest children’s series of all time.
Read Column →June 18th, 2019
Header background by Steve Johnson I love heritage months so much because they make me think. They make me think about my own experience walking through the world and how it aligns or doesn't with the myriad experiences around me. These months are a focused opportunity to broaden our perspectives and truly appreciate the challenges various communities endure. Pride month is my favorite because it's symbol is the rainbow and it encompasses such a broad range of interesting individuals.
Read Column →June 17th, 2019
In his new book of non-fiction, White, Bret Easton Ellis questions whether Cormac McCarthy’s dark western Blood Meridian would be published today. To paraphrase Ellis, Blood Meridian is an aesthetic masterpiece, but it’s also an ideological nightmare. It lives in the spot where aesthetics intersect with ideology. Or, not so much intersect as barrel towards each other like two trucks with burned-out brakes. After those trucks collide, would Blood Meridian come out of the wreckage whole?
Read Column →June 13th, 2019
There is no right way or wrong way to write a novel. All you have to do, as Neil Gaiman once said, is “Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.” But even though there is only one way to write a novel – actually writing it – there are multiple strategies for plotting your novel. Outline? No outline? Pantser? Methodical plotter?
Read Column →June 11th, 2019
Photo by Tim Gouw In the summer of 2012, I got an internship at W.W. Norton & Co., a privately-owned publishing company in New York City, known for their anthologies and critical editions. To a girl who grew up reading books in a small town in Pennsylvania, moving to the “biggest” city (Philadelphia was the “big” city) to work in books was the most exciting dream-come-true.
Read Column →June 7th, 2019
Author photos: Curtis Brown, Cindy Johnson Human beings are shaped by their environments as much as they shape their environments. So, too, do the first sentences of short stories shape the stories themselves, as much as they are shaped by their stories.
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