Darcey Steinke has a new novel, Sister Golden Hair, coming out this fall, and Granta has an excerpt available online. For more about Steinke, be sure to read Lydia Millet‘s praise for her early novel, Jesus Saves.
New Novel, New Excerpt
Let’s Trade Manuscripts
“If you ask around, I’m sure you’ll be able to find a really bad novel easily enough. I mean a novel by someone who has spent isolated years writing a book they are convinced is a great work of literature. And when you’re reading it you’ll know it’s bad, and you’ll know what bad truly is.” What makes bad writing so bad? Toby Litt at The Guardian investigates.
●
●
True Crime, True Empathy
Why are women the primary consumers of true crime literature while an overwhelming majority of the genre showcases violence towards women? Over at Hazlitt, Casey Johnston has a few ideas about this seemingly irreconcilable paradox. Here is a complementary piece by Ujala Sehgal for The Millions on the female True Detectives of literature.
●
●
Party Animals
“The point of a party is to make us forget we are solitary, wretched and betrothed to death; in other words, to transform us into animals.” Michel Houellebecq offers some handy tips, over at The Believer. Pair with this Millions review of Houellebecq’s The Map and the Territory.
●
●
Blazing the Path
Pultizer Prize winner for fiction (and Year in Reading alum), Viet Thanh Nguyen, speaks about writers who “blazed the path” ahead of him at The Washington Post. For all of the Pulitzer Prize finalists, head to our comprehensive list.
●
●
Melancholy Maurice Sendak Speaks
Where the Wild Things Are author/illustrator Maurice Sendak, 82, wistfully reflects on age, love, and mortality in this interview, after a mural he painted in New York was restored and moved to the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia. (via @BookBench)
●
●
Poetry Walk in the Bronx
Don’t miss Jon Cotner‘s “Poem Forest” at the NY Botanical Gardens Nov 4-5 and Nov 11-12, 12-4:30. It’s a self-guided tour that promises “a new kind of poetry experience, as well as a new kind of walking experience. Poet-walker Jon Cotner has fused lines selected from 2500 years of nature poetry with Thain Forest’s autumnal landscape.” Details at the Poetry Society of America.
●
●