“The meanings we assign to hoods have everything to do with what we regard as frightening and dangerous, and where we think that power resides.” Alison Kinney on her Hood, the latest book in the Object Lessons series.
The Life of Objects
Emergent Criticism
The National Book Critics Circle has announced its inaugural class of Emerging Critics, including our own Ismail Muhammad! Read his first piece for us, “Frank Ocean and the Black Male Body,” here.
Last Call for MPWs
Last November, the University of Southern California announced that it would stop offering a Masters in Professional Writing, ending a program that counts Richard Yates and Hubert Selby, Jr. among its faculty alumni. At The Nervous Breakdown, Aram Saroyan (son of William) looks back on his time as an instructor.
Questioning the Score
Lucy Madison asks how the 25 National Magazine Award nominations went to 25 male writers and discovers it may be because fewer women write long-form journalism, “particularly at those publications that tend to get nominated for National Magazine Awards.”
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“Cultivate Lightness”
What should you do if, horror of horrors, you find yourself appearing as a character in someone else’s book? Michelle Huneven shares her experience being fictionalized in an essay for The Paris Review. Her advice? “Don’t read too much into it. Cultivate lightness.” Pair with our profile of Huneven, “Not Lost, Just Rearranged.”
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All Jokes Aside
Over at Vulture, Jesse David Fox offers a retrospective of 100 years of jokes that shaped modern comedy.
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Book Club Blunder
What would happen if you anonymously attended a book club about your own novel? Kevin Baker discovered the embarrassing consequences when a meeting on his novel Dreamland turned negative.
Lonely Writers
Recommended Reading: Michele Filgate on the loneliest artists of all: writers. Pair with Angela Qian’s piece on a lonely writer, Olivia Laing.
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