For those of you who were not on Twitter yesterday, the novelist Elizabeth McCracken tweeted a series of tips for applying to MFA fiction programs. Among other bits of good advice, she says it’s generally best to apply with a solid short story rather than a novel chapter.
No Fanfiction, Please
A Mother’s Love
One Romanian woman may have committed “a barbarian crime against humanity” by incinerating a collection of seven famous paintings – including Picasso’s “Harlequin Head,” Monet’s “Waterloo Bridge, London,” and Gauguin’s “Girl in Front of Open Window.” Her excuse? It was in order to protect her son – a skilled art thief – from prosecution.
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The Week of Lydia Davis
If you don’t have a New Yorker subscription and can’t read Dana Goodyear’s wonderful profile of Lydia Davis, then you can at the very least check out the Can’t and Won’t author’s interview with Quarterly Conversation. Or, of course, you could just go straight to the source and mainline some of her short fiction directly.
Huh. Who Knew?
“The Mariko Aoki phenomenon is a phenomenon consisting of the urge to defecate while visiting a bookstore. Originating in Japan, it is named for the woman who first publicized such an urge.”
Poetry Machine
Villanelle Bot, a Twitter bot that composes poems in villanelle form, is publishing the automated poetry on their blog. The bot uses Twitter posts from random people, then stitches together all lines that end in certain words to form a full poem. You could also check out our piece on the best of literary Twitter.
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Digital Eustace
Sparksheet interviews Blake Eskin, the New Yorker's first and only web editor, who shares the venerable magazine's unique approach to having an online presence. (via)
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The Canyons Gets a Trailer
After securing the necessary funds on its Kickstarter page, and after enduring Lindsay Lohan’s trademark version of “professionalism,” The Canyons looks like it will finally be released next month. The film, which was written by Bret Easton Ellis and directed by Paul Schrader, got its first official trailer this week.
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Can someone tweet tips on how we can get all the MFA Fiction programs in the country permanently shuttered?
I fail to see how the headline of this article has anything to do with its extremely short content (or the content it links to). What in the world does submitting a short story vs. a novel chapter to an MFA program have to do with fanfiction? Even in the Tweets curated and linked to, I didn’t see McCracken mention anything about fanfiction.
Am I missing something?