“And who could disagree? Joyce Carol Oates expressed her view on Twitter: ‘Wikipedia bias an accurate reflection of universal bias. All (male) writers are writers; a (woman) writer is a woman writer.'” Wikipedia has got a women writers problem.
The Count
Dispatch from Italy
Over at Asymptote Journal, Aamer Hussein discusses three well-kept Italian secrets who aren’t Elena Ferrante. Pair with Cora Currier’s Millions essay on reading Italy through Ferrante’s books.
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Do Not Shout
“Always practice basic online etiquette, or ‘netiquette.’ Consider including emoticons to help add personality to your message and set the right tone. Also, be sure to stay on topic in a conversation and avoid writing in all caps, which is the online equivalent to shouting.” The Amazon Author Insights blog (full disclosure: Amazon helps us keep the lights on around here!) has a list of guidelines for authors looking to engage with their fans (and critics) on Goodreads. More recommended reading: our own Emily St. John Mandel on how to respond to your critics.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Hensher, Smith, Morgenstern, Southgate
Booker-snubbed, but still widely anticipated, Philip Hensher’s King of Badgers is out today. As are Ali Smith’s There But for The, Erin Morgenstern’s uber-hyped debut The Night Circus, and The Taste of Salt by Martha Southgate, who wrote here about writers’ work getting better as they get older.
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Goosebumps Turns Twenty
Two decades after the release of the first Goosebumps book, Jen Doll checks in with R. L. Stine.
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Sonya Chung Reading at Long Island University
I’ll be reading at Long Island University in Brooklyn on Monday, April 4th at 12 noon, with Gary Shteyngart. I have no idea what I’ll be reading – possibly something new, or something very old.
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A Quintet of Interviews for Your Delectation
Anya Ulinich, author of Petropolis, talks to World Literature Today: “What else can a person do when she gets home after a ten-hour work day – with a toothache that she can’t afford to fix . . . – but fall on the couch and watch whatever is in front of her face?” . . . Lydia Davis, whose Collected Stories is just out, talks to Sarah Manguso for The Believer: “At the origin of the work there has to be strong feeling, if it’s going to be any good. Of course, that strong feeling can be a delight in language.” . . . The Book Bench unearths a 1978 John Updike interview with a Croation periodical, which finds the Rabbit Angstrom author halfway through his tetralogy. . . . Edwin Frank of NYRB Classics talks to Omnivoracious, and selects his favorite books in the series (via). . . . And James Ellroy submits to interrogation at The Paris Review: “I was always thinking about how I would become a great novelist.”
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In Context
At Signature Reads, Matt Staggs offers some reading suggestions in light of the discriminatory anti-LGBTQ laws recently passed in Mississippi, North Carolina, and other states.
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