“So why should the stories about us always be about the bad stuff? We deserve the romantic comedy, the late night barfly scene, the silly, light-hearted stuff of life reflected back at us.” Camille Perri writes about the need for queer stories that are not rooted in sadness, trauma, or loss. Pair with: an essay on the commercial viability of LGTBQ literature.
LGBTQ Characters Deserve Happiness Too
Reading the VIDA Count
Yesterday, VIDA released its annual count of women in prominent magazines, and while they found that most of the magazines they looked at still publish significantly more men than women, they reported that The Paris Review and The New York Times Book Review published many more women in 2013 than they did in 2012. Amanda Hess takes a look at VIDA’s findings at Slate.
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If A Boy Could Dream
“I was a fraud in a field of language, which is to say, I was a writer.” Ocean Vuong on immigrating into English and the first poem he ever wrote.
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New Dyer Book
Word of a new book from Millions fave Geoff Dyer has just emerged. (Edit: new in the U.S.; it’s been published previously in the U.K.) The Missing of the Somme, due in August, is a “meditation on World War I.”
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New Asymptote Featuring Péter Nádas and Anne Carson
Recommended Reading: The latest issue of Asymptote, which features work from Péter Nádas and an interview with Anne Carson. (Bonus: Carson has a poem up on The New Republic’s website.)
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More Adler
It’s turning into Speedboat Week here, so why not spend the weekend with some of Renata Adler‘s most renowned nonfiction? Her controversial reassessment of Pauline Kael (featuring “A Limitless Capacity to Inquire,” one of the best found poems you’ll ever read) is at the NYRB, and her deep dive into l’affaire Lewinski can be found at the L.A. Times. Interestingly, as Sarah Weinman points out, Adler’s 2001 book about the Bilderberg Conferences still hasn’t seen the light of day. (“Who suppresses manuscripts? We do!”)
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Moving in for the Kill
Killing off your characters is never an easy feat. At The New York Times, thriller writer Alex Berenson discusses his reservations on killing the hero of his spy series. “John Wells has markedly enriched my life — an impressive feat for a man who doesn’t exist.” The eighth installment, The Counterfeit Agent, just came out.
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Donald J. Sobol Passed Away
Donald J. Sobol, author of the Encyclopedia Brown series, passed away last week at age 87.
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