Think back to your time as a 14-year-old. What were you doing with your time? Were you beating Norman Mailer in a national essay contest? A Guide for the Perplexed author Dara Horn was.
“An uncommonly precocious writer.”
“The history of sex is also a literary history.”
We knew this day would come. A review of Fifty Shades of Grey appears in The Los Angeles Review of Books. Your move, Robert Silvers.
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L.A. Times Book Prize Winners
New Year, New Interviews
For their first interview of 2013, The Rumpus talks to Zadie Smith, who also, if you’ll recall, told us about her Year in Reading last month.
Joyless
Poor Emily Schultz. Her debut novel is getting trashed on Amazon — not because it’s a bad novel, but because a number of reviewers have confused her with Stephen King. (It doesn’t help that her magazine also shares a name with King’s novel.)
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Dividing Lines
In spite of the title of her blog post, Lily Meyer doesn’t think Ann Patchett is really an enemy of Zadie Smith. Instead, she thinks the two authors play opposing roles in her life, thanks largely to the different effects their books have on her perceptions. At the Ploughshares blog, she contrasts their novels, using excerpts from White Teeth and Bel Canto. Related: Kevin Charles Redmon’s review of Patchett’s novel State of Wonder.
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Cohen’s New Old Ideas
Leonard Cohen’s new album Old Ideas is getting glowing reviews. Slate says of Cohen, “When it comes to lyrics, he’s second to no one—including Dylan.”
A Literary BuzzFeed
BuzzFeed is launching an Emerging Writer’s Fellowship, complete with $12,000 stipend, and Saeed Jones, whose poetry collection Prelude to Bruise was released last year, will be their new Literary Editor. Electric Literature talked to Jones about digital journalism, the need for diversity in writing and publishing, and what he’s looking for in Fellowship applicants.
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