Tom Jenks, co-founder of Narrative Magazine (which charges writers $23 to submit), is releasing a 400-page, six-chapter craft book on the art of imaginative fiction titled A Poetics of Fiction. The information inside the book is billed as “more than useful—it’s essential and not readily available anywhere else”—maybe that’s why it retails for $225.
Chapter One: Open a Savings Account
Summer Belongs To Someone Else
Recommended Reading: This story by John Patrick McHugh at Granta Magazine. Do yourself a favor and check out this one while you’re at it.
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Maurice Sendak at the Opera
Wallace Ludel explores the imaginative sets Maurice Sendak designed for a dozen operas and ballets, as well as the author's fascination with the stage.
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Friends Forever
Attention Babysitters Club fans: at 5:30 EST tonight, Scholastic will be holding a live Twitter party with author Ann M. Martin. Maybe it’s finally time to find out if Claudia ever finished middle school, yes / yes?
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Depravity’s Rainbow
The #AuthorSexts trending topic had us rolling the other day, and now you can revisit some of the best submissions thanks to Electric Literature.
If You Like TED Talks
On the Media‘s Bob Garfield hosts “The Genius Dialogues,” a new interview podcast featuring recipients of the MacArthur Foundation’s so-called genius grants. First-season guests include Radiolab creator Jad Abumrad; Luis von Ahn, founder of the language learning app DuoLingo; microbiologist Manu Prakash; choreographer Elizabeth Streb; and writer and producer David Simon. We’ve hosted a few geniuses here as well, including Ben Lerner, Yiyun Li, and Karen Russell.
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Tana French’s Accidental Writing
Aspiring writers who’ve long dreamed of critical acclaim will no doubt be slightly miffed at Tana French’s admission that her writing “happened by accident.” As the former actress explains to The Guardian, writing In the Woods was a subconscious, almost involuntary experience: “I thought I could never write a proper book, I’d never done it before. But I thought I could write a sequence. Then I had a chapter.”
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The Thirsty North
Newsflash: people in cold states drink a lot more than people in warm states.
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Views of the Sandworm
Now that classic sci-fi mag Omni has risen from the Hades of publishing, editors are combing its massive archives in search of material to republish. Among that material, it turns out, are drawings of Dune homeworld Arrakis — drawings that happen to be endorsed by none other than Frank Herbert himself.
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