For all my fellow NaNoWriMo failures, here’s how not to write a novel, romance or otherwise.
NaNoNoMore
Belle Epoque
In the annals of Southern literature, Elizabeth Spencer isn’t as well-known as Faulkner or Flannery O’Connor, but she is, Wilton Barnhardt writes, “one of America’s best short-story writers.” The 92-year-old author’s new collection marks “65 years and counting of superb writing,” he argues.
The E-Reader and Tablet Tidal Wave
Pew Internet finds that tablet and e-reader ownership nearly doubled over the holiday gift-giving period 29% of Americans now own at least one of these digital reading devices. Meanwhile, the content producers keep rushing in, with NBC Universal launching an e-book arm and Apple’s textbook scheme netting 350,000 downloads in three days.
An Inquiring Mind
“I say peel back the immediate surface layer and let’s see what’s actually underneath, if it’s possible to find that out. As a child, of course, I grew up looking under dead logs to see if there might be a newt. Most of the time there wasn’t a newt. Sometimes there was.” Margaret Atwood talks newts and skepticism in a new interview over at Hazlitt. Atwood’s newest, The Heart Goes Last, is out now.
Royal Books Returned
A container filled with some 1,200 books–Royal books of the Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910)–was returned to Korea from Japan, today, marking the completion of a mission that kicked off in 2006 to retrieve cultural heritages looted during colonial rule.
Your friendly neighborhood poet laureate
A while back, we reviewed an anthology of work by American poets laureate–that is, those appointed by the President to serve the entire United States. But there are 45 currently-serving state poets laureate, and thousands of city, county, and other poets laureate as well. What exactly do they do?