Writing Workshops LA – which was founded by our own Edan Lepucki – is hosting “The Conference” on June 28 of this year, and the day-long event will consist of “educational and thoughtful panel discussions as well as smaller, in-depth presentations and workshops aimed at informing and inspiring every attendee.” Presenters will include award-winning literary agents, editors, and writers including Joanna Rakoff, Adam Wilson, David L. Ulin, Counterpoint’s Dan Smetanka, and Daniel Gumbiner of McSweeney’s. Don’t miss your chance to sign up for the early bird special before April 15th – the first 40 attendees will also get an invitation to a literary pub quiz event the night before.
Writing Workshops LA: The Conference
L337 5P34K, on the other hand…
"Slang is here to stay, not as the enemy of Standard English but as its partner."
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From Fantasy to Allegory
"Fantasy is a tool of the storyteller. It is a way of talking about things that are not, and cannot be, literally true. It is a way of making our metaphors concrete, and it shades into myth in one direction, allegory in another." Neil Gaiman reviews Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant for the New York Times Book Review and considers the power, and risks, of fantasy. Pair with Ishiguro's talk with The Telegraph about the 10 years since the publication of Never Let Me Go.
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On Hikikomoris, Etc.
Recommended Reading: Larissa Pham on Milena Michiko Flašar’s I Called Him Necktie.
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“I left him unfinished”
Recommended Reading: “Man Hole” by Natalie Eilbert.
The Humanity of Hobbits
Are hobbits human? Matthew Yglesias asks this question at Slate and mines J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings to find out. The answer is yes; they are just shorter.
Japan’s “National Disease”
It's hard to believe that the country containing Aokigahara, or "The Suicide Forest", has for so long ignored its abundance of clinically depressed, "overworked" citizens, but Junko Kitanaka, in her book Depression in Japan, explains exactly why that's happened.
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