“A month ago, I touched a lock of Sylvia Plath’s hair.” At Tin House, Emma Komlos-Hrobsky examines the relationship between the late poet and her fans.
Plath People
Making the Cut
Even though the advice to “kill your darlings” implies editing your writing is a painful process, some writers relish it. At The New York Times, Pamela Erens discusses the pleasures of trimming down her writing. “For every word I cut, I seem to have more space between my ribs, more lung capacity.” For more Erens, read her essay on accepting her book cover.
Letter to Harlem
Over at Catapult, Morgan Jerkins writes on calling Harlem home. As she puts it, “Blackness is not one specific characteristic. It is many things, things that I have yet to discover. It means that different variations of blackness can find home in one another.”
Murakami on 1Q84
A blogger translates a long Murakami interview about 1Q84 (scroll down for parts I, II, and III). (via)
A Writer Who Needed “The Talk”
The Journals and Diaries of E.M. Forster is now on sale, and among other things, it reveals that its author, who appeared to feel queasy about sex in general, didn’t know exactly how “male and female joined” until he was thirty years old.
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Martians Among Us
Everybody knows the saying, “men are from Mars; women are from Venus.” Well, some scientists now believe we might all be from Mars. (Sorry, Venus.)
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Bad Sex in Fiction
Bad sex in fiction! Here are your excerpts from Literary Review‘s annual contest.