Alexandra Alter interviews National Book Award winner Ta-Nehisi Coates about the success of Between the World and Me. As he puts it, “The best part of writing is really to educate yourself. I don’t want to be anybody’s expert. I came in to learn.” Pair with our own Sonya Chung’s Millions piece on Coates’s epistolary essay.
Writing Educates the Self
Here Refrain
Beautiful, shimmer, jetty. Poets Joy Harjo, Claudia Rankine, Robert Pinsky et al. tell Merriam-Webster about their favorite words. Related, and far less pretty: the most-looked-up words post-election include fascism, bigot, and xenophobe.
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In Defense of Bad Sex
We recently posted about the finalists of Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction Awards. (Morrissey’s List of the Lost was the winner!) Allan Drew writes at The Atlantic in defense of #BadSex.
Graphomania
“I’m a total database nerd. In college I worked as a troubleshooter for a database of medical research, trying to predict and prevent mistakes in the data entry process to avoid screwing up the records. Is anything more satisfying than a successfully written query delivering precisely the required results? It’s so much more direct than writing fiction. A query either works or it doesn’t.” Steve Himmer’s Nervous Breakdown self-interview.
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Good Intentions
“To make money, I’m planning on teaching English, or coaching recreational soccer, or something. But that’s not important because apartments are cheap, and that part, kicking around a ball, or helping Thai children have a better command of the English language, even though I don’t speak a word of Thai, will probably only be a chapter in my book. Those things will provide some nice blog-potential details, too. They’ll show the texture of my everyday life.” Travelling to the East for the sole purpose of writing a memoir.
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Reviews of Tom McCarthy’s C
“Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!”
Elizabeth Bishop’s Brazil. And earlier: Bishop, translation, and the transmutation of loss.
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A Monster’s Body
Marjorie Liu is the author of Monstress, a new comic from Image. In her free time, she has also earned a law degree and published over twenty novels, novellas, short stories, and comics. Hear what she has to say about diversity, the body, and writing. You could also read our review of The Best American Comics 2014.
In Defense of Quiet Books
“The best thing I ever do for my writing is to take a walk alone in the woods behind our house. Nothing else gets my writing juices flowing so well. And yes, I think that I absolutely need more quiet in our current fractured world.” For Poets & Writers, novelist Leesa Cross-Smith interviewed fellow writer Silas House about quiet books and the importance of nature in the writing process. Pair with: our own Emily St. John Mandel on the pleasures of quiet books.