Becoming a Radical Reviser: The Millions Interviews Matt Bell
More and more, I take sentence level suggestions without hesitation: on one draft of Appleseed, I hit "Accept All" without even reviewing the changes.
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A Year in Reading: Hannah Gersen
I read Patricia Lockwood's No One Is Talking About This in two sessions and wasn't tempted to look at my phone because reading it was like being on the Internet—but a highly refined, dreamy version.
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The Millions 2021 Gift Guide for Readers and Writers
Wondering what to get the readers and writers in your life? We've got you covered with a bookish calendar, poem-inspired socks, a lucky paperweight, and more!
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Diagnosing Billy Pilgrim: On Tom Roston’s ‘The Writer’s Crusade’
Is Slaughterhouse-Five evidence of Kurt Vonnegut's PTSD? We revisit the classic novel, paired with Roston's work of literary criticism, biography, and cultural history.
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Birding While the World Burns: On Charles Hood’s ‘A Salad Only the Devil Would Eat’
It’s a book that celebrates the delights of amateurism, the facts that you stumble upon when you’re reading for something else, or the rare bird you happen to notice when you’re out on a whale watch.
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FOMO, but for Books
My FOMO is particularly acute in the summer. When I go on vacation, I always take too many books with me. The haphazard reading of my childhood summers is gone, and sometimes I think I’m chasing it, when I pack too many books.
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How to Get the Muse to Visit
Don’t go on the Internet, even if it’s to jog your memory or to fact-check something you or the Muse has said. You can fact-check later with the Editor. That’s the kind of thing editors like to do.
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Year in Reading: Hannah Gersen
There was a moment when I was convinced that I was going to spend the rest of 2020 reading Ripley novels.
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The Millions Annual Holiday Gift Guide for Writers
I’ve written and erased at least 20 introductions to this year’s gift guide. I don’t know what to say except: we all really need a holiday this year.
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Letting the Days Go By
The song strikes me as a description of how we get through life: we let the days go by, riding on the backs of accumulated habits. Sometimes we wonder: how did we get here? I’m having one of those moments now. Maybe you are, too.
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Fate, Capitalism, and Football: The Millions Interviews Katherine Hill
I think many of us are looking to bust out of the current conventions of novel structure, which somehow feel so fixed. Which is interesting to me because the novel is actually a pretty unregulated form.
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Returning to Books After Climbing Peak TV
I choose books with the resigned sense that I will never in my lifetime read all the authors recommended to me. It’s strange to have that feeling with TV.
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A Year in Reading: Hannah Gersen
I think this “strange thing” is what must happen to all of us if we wish to address the environmental crisis. We need to get closer to plants and animals, to remember that we are all living on this planet together.
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The Millions 2019 Gift Guide for Writers
All writers want is more time and a cabin for brooding. But time is relative, and cabins are often chilly. Here are some gift ideas that are more realistic.
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I’m Going to Keep Writing: At 91, Lore Segal Is Still Going Strong
I still have a lot of curiosity, and a lot of celebration to do. It’s a lucky life.
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I Have to Write Differently Now: The Millions Interviews Jennifer Acker
I was bouncing back and forth between people’s individual views about how the story should be told. I just needed to find the person whose vision aligned with my own.
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I Was Formed by What I Didn’t Know: The Millions Interviews Dani Shapiro
I didn't have the luxury of thinking, I’m going to write about this five years from now, after I’ve processed it. This book felt like it required immediacy.
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A Year in Reading: Hannah Gersen
I read Charlotte’s Web many times as a kid, so I knew the story had made an impression, but I hadn’t realized what an influence the prose style had been, that it was a music that would stay with me for life.
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