I’ve written before about the First Sentence series at Granta. The magazine asks a prominent writer to explain how they came to write an opening line. Recently, they asked Bear Down, Bear North author Melinda Moustakis to talk about the beginning of her story “River So Close”: “She’s a good-for-nothing chummer.” You could also read Jonathan Russell Clark on the art of the opening sentence.
Chummers
Stories in Verse
In 2010, the poet Tarfia Faizullah traveled to Bangladesh to speak with the survivors of the 1971 Liberation War. Eventually, she wrote a poetry collection about those interviews, which went on to win the Crab Orchard Series First Book Award. At The Paris Review Daily, Sean Carman interviews Faizullah.
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An Existential Test
“It is a privilege and a gift and an honor to be a debut author, but it is, above all things, an existential test.” Courtney Maum writes about the darker side of publishing a first book.
The Rise of the “Lit’ry Lady”
Tina Jordan unearths a 1907 Times article observing the phenomenon of the "lit'ry lady," a group of women taking over the bestseller lists for the first time.
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The Perils of Contact
The Perils of ‘Contact Me’: in an essay in the New York Times, Ben Yagoda wonders whether authors have made themselves too accessible to readers.
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Lerner on Berger
Recommended Listening: Ben Lerner stops by The New Yorker’s fiction podcast to discuss “Woven, Sir,” a story by John Berger.
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Bring your @ game.
Sarah Weinman has compiled a list of verified literary Twitter accounts on her blog.
It took me a while to settle on one, but I eventually found the perfect opening sentence for my book, “Letter to a Prohibitionist”: “First of all, I want to thank you for getting back to me.”