At The Nervous Breakdown Marie Mutsuki Mockett writes about being uninvited from a reading in New York and other obstacles to promoting her first novel, and how she channeled her creativity to take charge of her own PR.
Sinking (and Swimming) as a Debut Novelist
Hats Off to the World’s First Chinese Laureate
On Thursday, the fiction writer Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize for Literature, which marks the first time a Chinese writer has won the prestigious award. Lauded for his command of “hallucinatory realism,” Yan (whose pen name translates to “not talking” in Mandarin) has drawn comparisons to Faulkner for the complexity of his fictional settings. Back in 2005, John Updike published his thoughts on the writer.
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The Count
“And who could disagree? Joyce Carol Oates expressed her view on Twitter: ‘Wikipedia bias an accurate reflection of universal bias. All (male) writers are writers; a (woman) writer is a woman writer.'” Wikipedia has got a women writers problem.
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Sports Fiction
In an unexpected crossover of the sporting and the literary, ESPN Magazine is running a sports-themed short fiction contest. They aren’t publicizing it online, but this PDF from the print mag has all the details.
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The Real Cuba
Year in Reading alumna Patricia Engel writes about the “real” Cuba she encountered in her research trips. Pair with Bill Morris’s Millions essay on Havana’s love for cars.
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Just because you can self-publish doesn’t mean you should.
Will the new technologies ruin talented writers? Jason Pinter examines the perils of straight-to-ebook self-publishing.
Making a Place Worth Living
“It is difficult for them to understand why a successful black woman would choose to return to the South and, worse yet, to Mississippi, which looms large in the public’s imagination for its racist depredations, and rightfully so.” For Time magazine’s American South issue Jesmyn Ward writes about her decision to return home to Mississippi.