“I think the key to social media for authors is remembering this: its main purpose is really to show that you are a real human being who lives in this world.” Year in Reading alums (respectively) Celeste Ng, Alexander Chee, Roxane Gay, and Adam M. Grant talk to LitHub about how to be a writer on the internet.
Author Internet 101
Aura Estrada Short Story Contest
Boston Review’s Aura Estrada Short Story Contest is underway. This year’s submissions will be judged by What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank author (as well as Year in Reading contributor) Nathan Englander, and the victor will earn a $1,500 prize as well as publication.
The Art of the Sentence
“If the history of the American sentence were a John Ford movie, its second act would conclude with the young Ernest [Hemingway] walking into a saloon, finding an etiolated Henry James slumped at the bar in a haze of indecision, and shooting him dead.” Adam Haslett takes on Stanley Fish, Strunk & White, and the art of writing a sentence.
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Working Title
Recommended Reading: Anna Aslanyan on the challenges of translation and the nonliteral titles of Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels. Pair with Janet Potter’s Millions guide to finding the perfect title for that book in your drawer.
Literary Insults
This week in book-related infographics: a look at history’s greatest literary insults, from Capote to Hemingway to Faulkner.
The Ultimate Sentence
“If one-sentence stories are as common as snowflakes, one-sentence novels are as rare as white ravens.” At The New Yorker, Brad Leithauser writes about the one-sentence novel or the point when the story builds to a particular sentence. To give you an example, here’s one of his favorites from Lolita: “I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art.”
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I’ve Got Ideas
If you have a blog, you’ve probably fielded suggestions from your relatives about what you should write, who you should write about and what personal issues you should address in your posts. At The Hairpin, Michelle Markowitz shares a conversation with her mother on the subject.
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