“At first blush, bringing an eight-year-old to one of William Shakespeare’s quirkier plays in an effort to help her see herself, an Asian American girl, in popular culture did seem a rather odd decision.” Nicole Chung for Hazlitt on The Winter’s Tale, representation, and parenting in the age of Trump. And wouldn’t you know it, we have a piece specifically about that very play – “three/fifths wintry tragedy, two/fifths vernal comedy, and wholly a masterwork” – right here.
Whose Tale
“Happiness was born a twin.”
Robert and Richard Kalich are identical twins, and their family had the misfortune of having them both grow up to be writers.
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In Defense of Quiet Books
“The best thing I ever do for my writing is to take a walk alone in the woods behind our house. Nothing else gets my writing juices flowing so well. And yes, I think that I absolutely need more quiet in our current fractured world.” For Poets & Writers, novelist Leesa Cross-Smith interviewed fellow writer Silas House about quiet books and the importance of nature in the writing process. Pair with: our own Emily St. John Mandel on the pleasures of quiet books.
Steve Almond on Editors, Ambition, and Angry Dependence
Steve Almond at The Rumpus provides a “meditation on editors, ambition, and angry dependence” in reaction to the media’s coverage of the suicide of Kevin Morrissey, managing editor of The Virginia Quarterly Review.
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Correcting Gender Inequity
The Interference Archive went on a Wikipedia edit-a-thon to help balance gender inequality on the site, which is overwhelmingly edited by men. Our own Sonya Chung writes on how to write across gender.
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Advice From The Hoary
“Me? He wants me to give him advice? But why? I still have no idea what I am doing. Then I realized that I did, at least, have eight more years of a writing practice that had run in tandem with a life of odd jobs, graduate school, starting a business, traveling, etc. I thought about an anecdote my friend Daniel once told me about what happened when Ian McEwan was asked to give advice to a young writer just starting out. He simply said, ‘Be successful.’” Catherine Lacey gives advice to a not-much-younger writer.
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Hallberg Podcast
Our own Garth Risk Hallberg did a podcast with Three Percent, a “resource for international literature” at the University of Rochester.
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Goodreads Choice Awards
Make sure you vote for the 2011 Goodreads Choice Awards! (And make sure you join our Goodreads group afterwards!)
The Literate Frontman
Some of Jeff Tweedy‘s favorite writers: “I like Henry Miller a lot. I like William H. Gass a lot. Donald Barthelme, Robert Coover, Kurt Vonnegut. . . . I used to walk into bookstores when I was a kid and get the stuff that looked the craziest and the most free.” (In a Rolling Stone interview, unavailable online.)
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