Frederick Tuten recalls the first fan letter he ever wrote to novelist Jenny Diski in his 1999 interview with the author for BOMB Magazine.
Remembering Jenny Diski
“The Realest Language”
Recommended reading: The Awl takes a look at the “attempt to create a completely logical, absolutely universal language,” which goes about as well as you’d expect (read: not very).
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The Ghost of Playboy’s Literary Past
“We editors told ourselves the naked women were merely carnival barkers: they got an audience into the tent, but we kept them with the content.” In the Guardian, Playboy‘s former fiction editor Amy Grace Loyd reveals what it was like to work at the magazine and how she commissioned work from writers like Donna Tartt, Margaret Atwood, and Junot Díaz. Read our review of Loyd’s debut novel, The Affairs of Others.
Divisive Stores
“This year wasn’t short on the best kind of book: the type that polarizes opinion.” The New Republic reviews the most divisive books of the year. Included is our own Garth Risk Hallberg’s City on Fire. Check out opening lines from the story and an interview with the author.
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Russian Literary News
Russian literary news and awards — i.e. winners and runners-up of Russia’s Big Book Award — at Lizok’s Bookshelf.
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Edwidge Danticat on Gabriel García Márquez
“I had always felt that [Gabriel] García Márquez’s short stories often took a back seat to his longer works, and that his deadpan dark humor was not discussed often enough,” writes Edwidge Danticat.
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A writer by any other name…
Using pen names has been a common practice for, well, a very long time. George Eliot is a nom de plume, as are George Orwell and George Sand. Though not a George, journalist Sarah Hall chose to publish her fiction under a different name. She writes for The Guardian about this decision, the history of the pen name, and the reasons authors continue to use them.
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The case against writing manuals
In The Atlantic, Richard Bausch makes a case against writing manuals: “The trouble of course is that a good book is not something you can put together like a model airplane.”
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Paralyzing Shame
Recommended Reading: Elissa Altman on writing and giving permission to succeed.
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