The latest actor to go vampire? John. C Reilly! As you might expect, he’s a hammy vampire, not a sparkly one. See the preview for Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant. (The film is based on a series of children’s books by English-born Irish author Darren O’Shaughnessy, who publishes under the name Darren Shan.)
Cirque Du Freak
Growing Up
It’s a common trope in writing courses that young artists need a dose of childlike creativity. Self-help books for people with writer’s block are filled with callbacks to childhood interests. But is it possible, as Tasha Golden argues at the Ploughshares blog, that idealizing children isn’t the answer to our problems?
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Welcome Ujala!
We’d like to introduce you all to our new intern, Ujala Sehgal, who beat out 50+ other applicants for the position. Ujala lives in Manhattan and recently left a nascent career in corporate law to travel and focus on her writing. Her first full-length piece, about negotiating one’s limitations as a reader and writer, has been published today. Welcome Ujala!
Ancient Poetics
Recommended Reading: Chloe Garcia Roberts and Guangchen Chen on translating ninth century poet Li Shangyin.
O, Miami Poetry Festival
Do you live in Miami-Dade County? Do you want to get involved in the region’s burgeoning literature and poetry scene? If so you’ll want to check out the O, Miami Information Session on Wednesday, February 27th. The meeting is meant “to inform local Miami poets of different opportunities for participating in the 2013 O, Miami Poetry Festival.”
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Big Books, Big Brains
We like big books and we cannot lie. But are books just continuing to get longer and longer? A new survey of bestsellers has concluded that the average book is now 25% bigger than its counterpart fifteen years ago. The Guardian investigates. Mark O’Connell at The Millions has his own theory about long books.