Narrative Magazine announces its Fall 2009 Story Contest, open to fiction and non-fiction writers. Submission deadline November 30th.
Fall 2009 Story Contest
The Year of Incendiary Writing
Caitlin Flanagan's long Atlantic piece on Joan Didion has sparked a lot of conversation. Among the article's contentious lines: "to really love Joan Didion ... you have to be female."
Roaches are Red, Violets are Blue
Looking for a last minute Valentine's gift? Well, in the words of The Bronx Zoo, "How better to express your appreciation for that special someone than to name one of the Bronx Zoo's 58,000 Madagascar hissing cockroaches after them?"
Weather Permitting
What can you do with all the snow? Shelley Jackson is making stories out of it. The artist is writing a story entirely in snow. You can read the first 200 words of her tale on her Flickr. It begins, "To approach snow too closely is to forget what it is..."
Who do you Write Like?
Do you write like Stephen King? Or how about Chuck Palahniuk? That's what the I Write Like website told me when I entered my work into their little magical computer program--of course, I had to do it more than once!
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Nabokov’s Retranslation
"It has been said of the Beatles that there is not a clunker of a song in their oeuvre because they simply never let the bad stuff get released. The same might be said of Nabokov—for 'Camera Obscura' shows that he was indeed capable of writing a second-rate novel. (He knew it, and rewrote it.)" John Colapinto looks at Nabokov's retranslation of Laughter in the Dark for The New Yorker.
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Indispensable Squares
"Nobody there but dirty old men who spit tobacco juice and try to look up your skirt." The city square is one of the biggest architectural differences between the United States and Europe. Over at The Daily Beast, George Packer takes a look at plazas/piazzas and makes a case for why America needs more.
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