“People are deeply uncomfortable with the idea that the characters they love and regard as people, real people, were made up by someone, especially if that someone is a woman.” Cassandra Clare, the author who began by writing fanfiction and went on to pen the wildly successful The Mortal Instruments series, talks about her work with Penelope Green.
Ruling Her Realm
Fiction Vs. Autobiography
“The unverifiable world is vast and accommodating.” From Robert Atwan’s essay (pdf) “A Remarkable Orgasm, A Dying Pig, and A Scarlet Letter: Is It Truth, Fiction, or… Autobiography?” (via @maudnewton)
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The Worst Dinner Party
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The Onion Remembers Salinger
The Onion headline Bunch Of Phonies Mourn J.D. Salinger: “In this big dramatic production that didn’t do anyone any good (and was pretty embarrassing, really, if you think about it), thousands upon thousands of phonies across the country mourned the death of author J.D. Salinger, who was 91 years old for crying out loud.”
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De La Pava Up for PEN American Literary Prize
As part of its 2013 literary awards, the PEN American Center will grant nearly $150,000 to writers, editors, and translators through sixteen different awards and fellowships, and for the first time ever they’ve decided to publish their shortlist online. Among the finalists is Sergio De La Pava, whose novel A Naked Singularity is up for the $25,000 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for a debut work. You might recall our own Garth Risk Hallberg’s profile of De La Pava last summer, and you can catch a glimpse of the author’s next book on our Second-Half 2013 Book Preview.
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