Recommended Reading: this essay by Sophia Knight on why she decided to quit her high-stakes job as a corporate editor in favor of a more modest writer’s income. If it’s publishing stories you’re after, here’s an old Millions favorite on whether or not to self-publish.
We Can’t All Be David Ebershoff
The Best of Young Brazil
“Tracing the journey of a mediocre actor and Holocaust survivor ‘touched by some mysterious higher design’ as he forges and impersonates his way through the war and then back to the city of his birth, the story is part Samuel Beckett and part Isaac Bashevis Singer, with a sudden final bolt of O. Henry. It has the flavour of a morality tale, but what’s most fascinating to me is how difficult it is to derive a moral from it, or rather how easy it is to derive more than one and how openly they stand in conflict with each other.” Kevin Brockmeier extols the fiction of Leandro Sarmatz.
Interview with an Innkeeper
Some holiday cheer: John Scalzi offers up an interview with history’s most famous innkeeper.
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Best of Electric Lit
Here’s a look at the top-ten most read articles from Electric Literature of 2015, most of which we’ve already told you about and all of which is worth a revisit. Bonus: here’s a Best of Brain Pickings, as well.
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On WTF Moments
At The Space Review, which bills itself as an online journal devoted to the final frontier, Jeff Foust takes a look at The Pioneer Detectives, our new e-book by Konstantin Kakaes. The verdict? “It’s a fascinating reminder of how complex and challenging the scientific process can be.”
Out of Nowhere
Nell Zink, whose second novel comes out next week, has one of the lit world’s more unusual origin stories. An expat in Germany, she wrote her first novel in three weeks, after striking up a friendship over email with Jonathan Franzen. In the latest New Yorker, Kathryn Schulz details her story in full. You could also read Emily Gould’s recommendation of her work for Year in Reading.
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Psst–sorry to be that guy, but it’s Sarah! Sarah Knight.