A moving tribute to Ray Bradbury on The Paris Review Daily from his one time fact checker Stephen Andrew Hiltner: “Ray Bradbury, who never went to college and was entirely library educated, had what so many of the sophisticated, MFA-carrying writers today lack: passion, vitality, emotional awareness.” Also: Wired has collected a bunch of reminiscences from science fiction writers, including Ursula K. Le Guin.
Remembering Ray Bradbury
Staking Out the Best Real Estate
Writing and Reading Race
Recommended Reading: Katy Simpson Smith on who can fictionalize slavery and writing across time and race. Our own Edan Lepucki writes on reading slavery in fiction.
He Said, He Said (Tom Wolfe Edition)
Thomas Mallon seemed to enjoy Tom Wolfe’s new novel. Our own Nick Moran? Not so much.
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Back Home
Sometimes, a writer needs to live in the setting of his or her fiction, as was the case with William Faulkner, who famously took a train from Hollywood to Mississippi solely to break through his writer’s block. Other times, they need to move away to find the inspiration to write about their home. In The Globe and Mail, Marsha Lederman writes about Emma Hooper, who credits her move to England with helping her write a novel set in her native Saskatchewan.
I’m the Best One Here
If, while sitting in a writing class, you’ve ever looked around at your classmates and thought, “Dear Lord, these people are navel-gazers,” you might want to know that British researchers have found evidence that you were right.
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“There is so much life in cemeteries.”
Recommended Reading: “There Goes Valzer,” a new short story by László Krasznahorkai. (Translated by George Szirtes.)