Edmund White considers writers’ obsession with New York City in the 1970s, with photography by Peter Hujar. As White puts it, that was “a place and a time in which, rich or poor, you were stuck together in the misery (and the freedom) of the place, where not even money could insulate you.”
Another Place and Time
Everyone’s Writing
“Every month, Literary Hub, Electric Lit, and Catapult engage more than two million people with serious writing and contemporary writers, instead of leaving them to play Candy Crush or what-have-you.” Meet the man behind Lit Hub, Electric Lit, and Catapult, Andy Hunter. For reflections on the world of print, Nick Ripatrazone writes on the literary magazine and getting paid.
●
●
Blind Spots
Penny Perkins interviews Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty author Ramona Ausubel at The Rumpus. “I realized that this book I was writing about money had to be about race and it had to be about class and it had to be about privilege, and which of those things we are able to see and which we are blind to.” Pair with Ausubel’s writing at The Millions.
●
●
Borrowing Made Easy
A fledgling New York tech firm has invented a new service, Oyster, that the company claims is a lot like Spotify in its workings. Their innovation? The products they’re sharing are books.
●
●
The Next Language to Try
We’d been planning to brush up on our French, Swahili, and Klingon this summer, but a new contender might just grab us away. You can now learn to speak Dothraki – a fictional tongue from George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series and the hit TV show Game of Thrones – with this $18 software course. Next: High Valyrian?
Happy Birthday, Lord Byron
Happy Birthday to Lord Byron, who was born on this day in 1788. Read some of his poems aloud or check out illustrations of “Don Juan” at Brain Pickings to celebrate his life’s works.
●
●
Let’s Get a Novelist to Write a Birth Scene Transmitted via Skype
This week, Allison K. Gibson looked into the “awkward but necessary role of technology in fiction,” and what it means to include it or overlook it in a given work of fiction. Similarly, what’s with the absence of birth scenes in literature?
●
●
“In matters like writing[…], a man does what he has to do—if he has to write, why then, he writes”
Rebecca Davis O’Brien unearths a letter in which Malcolm Cowley tackles the timeless question, “Should I get an MFA?” Just as poignant as Cowley’s letter is novelist Helen DeWitt’s pointed dismissal of Cowley’s advice in the comments section.
●
●