Over at Catapult, Idra Novey writes on how her experience as a translator changed how she approaches her own work as a novelist. Pair with Magdalena Edwards’s Millions essay on reading Clarice Lispector in English.
Taking Risks on the Page
The Teen Whisperer
“When John Green told the crowd that, though he was proud of the movie, it wasn’t his movie, someone shouted, ‘But it’s your plot, John!’—which marked the first time I’d ever heard heckling about the nature of authorship.” Green, author of YA bestseller The Fault in Our Stars, is the literary hero of teenage girls, and nerdfighter hero to millions. After you read the excellent profile at The New Yorker, consider the The Millions’ own review.
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Big Screen Brooklyn
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Poems… In… Space!!!!
Thanks to NASA, three poets will have a chance to boldly go where no poets have gone before: Mars. Indeed, an online contest is currently open in which users can submit haiku to accompany the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission, which is scheduled for launch in late 2013. The MAVEN project will be the first mission devoted to understanding the Martian upper atmosphere. More details about sending poetry into outer space can be found here.
Measuring Detail Density
“Every story that works gets the level of description that it needs. Which isn’t to say that the level of description needed for every successful story is the same.” Tobias Carroll surveys the wide variety of detail density in fiction for Electric Literature.
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Jennifer Egan Interviews
Jacob Weisberg is hosting a series of interviews called “Conversations With Slate.” The first interviewee is A Visit from the Goon Squad author Jennifer Egan. You can catch the first two parts here and here; part three will be posted today.
Bradbury’s Legacy
As Ray Bradbury’s 90th birthday approaches, Slate explores why his stories have seeped into the culture.
Microscopic Tears
Photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher uses powerful scanning electron microscopes to provide “an unexpected view of [a] familiar subject: … human tears.”
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The Long Road
On the occasion of the publication of his novel The Madonnas of Echo Park, Brando Skyhorse writes about the decades-long path that got him there and the rules for writing that he devised. (Thanks, Steve)
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