Renowned children’s author Lois Lowry talks to The Days of Yore about writing as a mother, living in Japan as a child, and early receptions to Number the Stars and The Giver.
Early Years
Cross-Genre
Back in April, Dreamworks announced its plans to adapt Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell for the silver screen, with the author writing the script. A few months later, Rowell published a new book, Landline, that marked a return to adult fiction. At The Rumpus, Amanda Green sits down with the author to talk about YA, her productivity and the importance (or not) of getting up early to write. FYI, our own Janet Potter reviewed Eleanor and Park and Fangirl.
The Gone Girl With The Dragon Tattoo On The Train
Someone’s finally done it, and it’s our own Emily St. John Mandel, to boot: over at FiveThirtyEight, Mandel crunches the numbers on books with the word “girl” in the title, concluding that we may not have reached peak girl yet. (Also 65% of the time, the girl in question is actually a woman.) Nonetheless, if you’re looking to go rogue, check out our guide about how to title every book you ever write.
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“The point is she’s doing ballet badly”
As part of their Sunday Interview series, The Rumpus had a chat with Leslie Jamison, who talked to Martha Bayne about The Empathy Exams, the ubiquity of Frozen and the pathos of Taylor Swift. If you like, you could also take a look at our own Edan Lepucki’s interview with Jamison, or else read Ryan Teitman’s review of The Empathy Exams.
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We’re Not In the Establishment. Right, Geoff?
In The Guardian, Geoff Dyer talks about about the literary establishment and how, in particular, “unspoken assumption that [it] – whatever it is – is a bad thing.”
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Trading Camp Fires for Factions
First there was The Hunger Games summer camp, and now there will be a Divergent theme camp in Naperville, Illinois. Camp Divergent will feature activities based on the five factions, such as brain teasers on Erudite day and planting vegetables on Amity day. Don’t worry; no one will be ziplining off of a skyscraper for Dauntless.
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Taming the Land
David Gessner thinks Wallace Stegner and Edward Abbey are more relevant than they’ve ever been. Why? Their stories about the West anticipated the California drought. At Salon, Gessner explains why, among other things, Stegner spent much of his life debunking Western individualism.