“I’ve always loved memoir, but it’s still seen as such a trashy genre and I wanted to speak to it as actual literature because that’s how it feels to me.” Mary Karr sits down with The Rumpus to discuss The Art of Memoir. We recently posted an excerpt from and a review of the book.
Memoir and Literature
More NYC books
If you haven't gotten enough of literary New York quite yet, here's what the Guardian (UK) thinks you should be reading about "the American dream concretised in a shimmering mirage, the burgeoning metropolis of hope built on foundations of money, drugs and exploitation." Less judgmentally, Grantland's Kevin Nguyen focuses on two new books set in Queens, recommending High As the Horses’ Bridles by The Millions' own Scott Cheshire, which is no Brooklyn hipster novel: his opening scene ("among the finest published this year") has a 12-year-old offering a prophecy of Armageddon.
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“And then later how we were terrible again”
Recommended Reading: Guernica’s excerpt from Matt Bell’s upcoming novel In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods.
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Get Your Poetry On
Danielle Pafunda celebrates her daylong reign over the Academy of American Poets’ Twitter feed with a cento contest: She tweets the lines, you compose the poem, and three winners take home a selection of signed books written by these contest judges.
$50,000 / Free
Michael Kimball wants to save you $50,000 dollars on an MFA - by sharing what's he taught himself. Interested in reading more from someone without a traditional writing degree? Our own Hannah Gersen explains "The Value of Writing Programs: On Why I Don't Have an MFA."
Cozy Bildungsroman
Could “cozy literary fiction” ever be a thing? Mallory Ortberg at The Toast has penned a passionate defense of the unintentionally hilarious “cozy mystery” genre. Sate your mystery fix with this essay from The Millions’ own Matt Seidel on the four ways to wrap up a mystery tale.
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It Was Nothing, Really
W.H. Auden lived a secret life, not as a man with a second family or an illicit habit but as, weirdly enough, a genuinely kind human being. He paid for a friend’s costly operation and camped outside the apartment of a woman who suffered from night terrors until she felt safe enough to sleep on her own again. So why did the poet want to hide his good deeds? He claimed he didn’t want to be admired for basic decency.