“Genius” is a loaded term. Its application usually says more about the person making the judgment than it does about the genius in question. In The Guardian, Sophie Hannah argues that the term isn’t used enough to describe one writer in particular: Agatha Christie. You could also read Daniel Friedman on the terrible secret of all crime fiction.
Dial G
Apply for the Anisfield-Wolf Fellowship!
February 1st is the application deadline for the Cleveland State University Poetry Center Anisfield-Wolf Fellowship in Writing and Publishing. It’s a two year post-graduate fellowship that offers $40,000 per year while you work on completing a second book or starting a first. Apply now!
Sleep Talkin’ Man
“I can’t control the kittens. Too many whiskers! Too many whiskers!” A woman writes down everything her husband says in his sleep. Why isn’t this on Twitter? (via attackattack.tumblr.com)
●
●
Elmore Leonard’s Detroit
Does a writer make the city or does the city make the writer? At Grantland, Michael Weinreb discusses why Elmore Leonard is the ultimate Motor City writer and discovers Leonard’s Detroit. “Without his books, the city would still have suffered the same hellish decline. But because of him, that suffering was rendered into an art form all its own.” Pair with: Our own Bill Morris writing against Detroit’s ruin porn reputation.
Good Riddance
Recommended reading: Jason Arthur bids “Good Riddance to the Good-Bye-To-New-York Essay” for The Rumpus. Pair with Eryn Loeb‘s review of Goodbye To All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York and our own Elizabeth Minkel‘s account of rereading Didion‘s original “Goodbye to All That.”
●
●
Sarah Kasbeer on Writing About Trauma
Sarah Kasbeer on her debut essay collection, A Woman, a Plan, an Outline of a Man, and how much of a role writing plays in processing trauma.
●
●
●
Pictures of You
For those of you that complain about there not being any pictures: bring back the illustrated book!
●
●