At HTMLGIANT, Roxane Gay gets down to the details of everything she’s learned about the challenges and pitfalls, much of it shipping-related, of running a micropress. Essential reading for those dreaming of starting a small press one day.
Hell on Mail
A Little Day in the Life
"To Yanagihara, the commitment to journalism is a vital expression of the practical side of her nature: she likes the adrenaline of short deadlines and the satisfaction of making a new product each week." The Guardian profiles Hanya Yanagihara about her life, fiction, and day job as the editor of T magazine, the New York Times style supplement. From our archives: The Millions' interview with the acclaimed novelist.
Whatever was wrong with Hemingway
In the wake of Jonathan Franzen's much discussed New Yorker essay on Edith Wharton, Laura Miller defends readers who look to an author's life to aid their understanding of a given work: " Byron’s clubfoot, Flannery O’Connor’s lupus, Coleridge’s opium addiction and whatever was wrong with Hemingway do interest many readers because these factors shaped the life experiences from which the great work sprang."
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Which Author Spells The Best?
The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses is hosting their annual Spelling Bee Fundraiser on October 30th. New Yorker editor Ben Greenman will host the event, which will pit Jonathan Ames, Amor Towles and Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures author Emma Straub against one another (and more) in a battle of lexicographic perspicacity. (Can you state the language of origin, please?) The event will be judged by none other than Jesse Sheidlower, editor of the inimitable Oxford English Dictionary.
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Not My Best Work
In the early eighties, when the writer James Lasdun was working in publishing, he rejected a book by a writer who turned out to be a pen name for Doris Lessing. The fallout? He couldn’t bring himself to read her work until this year. (Related: our own Mark O'Connell's interview with Lasdun about his latest book.)