Robert McCrum’s got a question for you, and I’m interested to know the answer, too. Who are the naked writers? My first thought was perhaps Truman Capote, because he wrote so often from bed, but that’s not exactly strong evidence. Anyway, here are some writers in their underpants.
Fetishized rituals
Contrarian
In 1952, John Steinbeck wrote that Al Capp, the cartoonist and Lil’ Abner creator, might well have been the best writer working in the world at the time. In the Times, Andy Webster reviews a new biography of Capp, which reveals that underneath it all lay “a toxic chip on his shoulder.”
More Authorial Car Crashes
“Camus, Car Crashes, Cinema,” a weird sequel to Bill Morris’ two lists of writers who met death by motor vehicle.
●
●
Iowa’s Free Online Poetry Workshop
A new MOOC from the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program is scheduled to begin on June 28. “How Writers Write Poetry” is free and open to the public, and it will feature craft talks from poets such as Robert Hass and Kwame Dawes. A fiction-writing course is also scheduled for September. (Related: Read how several Iowa MFA students describe a typical day in the program.)
●
●
Getting into Character
In one of the most delightful photography projects of late, authors have dressed up as their favorite children’s book characters for Cambridge Jones’s 26 Characters exhibition at The Story Museum. Neil Gaiman looks particularly dashing as Badger from The Wind in the Willows. The exhibition will run from April 5 to November 2 in Oxford, U.K.
●
●
“The muscle that helps you ignore people with bad advice”
“The greatest mistake the American writer ever made was asking everybody else what they thought of their writing. Look around your current writing workshop. Look right and left. Most of those people will stop writing. Because it’s too hard, they have no ideas, no one understands them, whatever. A few of those failed people will become editors. These are the only people in the room who should ever really matter to you.”
And the NMA Winners Are…
The good souls at Longform.org have organized all of this year’s National Magazine Award winners.
●
●
The Racket
Tired of reading Mark O’Connell’s articles in silence? Check out his two pieces in The Racket, the first of which features attached audio from the author himself, and the second features an embedded video with Sam Bungey, the publication’s editor. Consider Mark’s reading Exhibit B in the case for Irish Accents Improving Everything, which I brought forth last week.
●
●