Rejection is something all writers face and no one’s pretending it’s pleasant, but worse than the rejection itself are the hours spent deciphering where a submission went wrong. Thankfully Lincoln Michel at Electric Literature was inspired by a 1920s rejection slip to create a self-explanatory “thanks but no thanks” note. While we’re thankful these aren’t the norm, we can definitely see the appeal…
Thanks But No
On the Voynich Manuscript
You can lose entire days while researching the Voynich Manuscript on the Internet, so maybe you should begin with this overview of the matter – one that asks whether or not the entire thing is just a big hoax.
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The Art of Encouragement
Bookcase Biases
“What people call you shapes how you see yourself, and teaches you how to navigate the world. But the moment you name something, you limit the possibilities of what it can be.” Marie Elia, who was trained as a cataloguing librarian, argues that our biases affect the way we describe books at Queen Mob’s Teahouse. Pair with our essay on “A Library of the Mind.”
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Amy Tan on Being the First for Some Readers
Nicole Chung interviews Amy Tan about her new memoir Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir, one of the highlights is when Tan ponders being one of the ‘first’ authors that people name/read when they think of Asian-American literature. “But when [“The Joy Luck Club”] came out, it did feel like there were many expectations from all areas — not just in the Asian American community, but in Asian culture itself, and in any ethnic studies community. There were people who said ‘At last!’ and there were people who said ‘How dare she?’ […] I wanted to say: I’m not writing sociology, it just so happens this is what happened in my own family.”
Remembering Seamus Heaney
On Monday, November 4th, Paul Muldoon, Colum McCann, Loretta Brennan Glucksman, and Jean Kennedy Smith will pay tribute to the recently deceased poet with a free, Off-Broadway production entitled Remembering Seamus: A Celebration of the Life and Work of Seamus Heaney.
I’m Sorry?
In his review of Mike Goldsmith’s Discord and Katherine Bouton’s Shouting Won’t Help, Roger Clark Miller (of Mission of Burma) wonders how our world got louder. His analysis? Our use of loud noise as a weapon had something to do with it.