Geoff Dyer on Novelistic Essays and Essayistic Novels

"A quick scan of the literature shows that the writerly gaze has been most often turned on male artists and their creative processes and passions." Claire V Mullins aims to redirect this gaze with a list for Electric Literature of 11 novels about female artists, including Zadie Smith's latest, Swing Time, which we reviewed last year. Related: Elizabeth Silver on the rise of strong female characters and the death of the literary ingénue.

While we're on the subject of Harry Potter, I have some bad news. According to J.K. Rowling herself, Cursed Child is likely the last we'll ever see of the boy (now middle-aged) wizard: "He goes on a very big journey during these two plays and then, yeah, I think we’re done. This is the next generation, you know ... So, I’m thrilled to see it realized so beautifully but, no, Harry is done now.”

Looking for someone to whip your writing into shape? Then tweet the new Gordon Lish bot, a Twitter account which offers unvarnished critiques of your tweets and fictional sentences. (Related: Frank Kovarik on the editor’s relationship with Raymond Carver.)

Not every worthy book finds the audience it deserves as quickly as Edan Lepucki's California. John Warner writes about the long aftermath of finding his debut, The Funny Man, featured in our 2011 Most Anticipated Book Preview: "I wondered, what if? Maybe this was going to be the next phase of my life, and when people asked me what I did, I’d say that I wrote novels." His new collection of short stories is Tough Day for the Army.

Somehow we knew that Gary Shteyngart had a pretty interesting childhood. As Andy Borowitz explains in a review of Little Failure, the author’s new memoir, the elder Shteyngart regaled his son with “outlandish” stories, most notably “a sci-fi saga about a Jewish planet under constant attack by volleys of pork.” You can learn what the author likes to read today in his Year in Reading piece.