Shannon Watts was in college when the massacre at Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen, TX occurred. She was a young mother with small children at the time of Columbine. A slightly older mother when Virginia Tech happened. And the Gabby Giffords shooting. And Sandy Hook. And El Paso. For the L.A. Review of Books, a conversation on gun violence, “thoughts and prayers,” and Watts’s new book Fight Like a Mother, which chronicles the founding of grassroots action network Moms Demand Action. “An experience I’ve had over and over is waking up to the news of a horrific shooting tragedy in this country and then my day is done. … Similar to secondhand smoke, in this country, we have secondhand trauma from gun violence because it is so ever-present.”
Thoughts and Prayers
Engage, Don’t Just Talk
“Perhaps no part of the First Novel Experience is as confusing and overwhelming as figuring out how to balance the demands of social media with the demands of writing more fiction.” Martha Woodroof talks with Lydia Netzer about social media in the world of publishing and book promotion. Their advice? “Try to be funny as much as you can. Try to participate in conversations, not just start your own. Try to engage, not just talk.”
“I think we could create a run on a bank.”
The Occupy Wall Street movement has been going on for seven months now, and it’s the subject of a new book entitled The Occupy Handbook. Over at The Daily Beast, you can check out an excerpt in which The Big Short author Michael Lewis interviews himself about his thoughts on the occupation.
Run the Jewels
“I fought the urge to throw up in my hands as I asked myself, ‘How the fuck did I get here?’” When you’re a jewel mule, as Kayli Stollak describes in this piece for The Establishment (via Narratively), going through customs can be a little stressful. For more lurid tales of crime and aristocratic extravagance, see our own Matt Seidel‘s review of Making Monte Carlo: A History of Speculation and Spectacle.
●
●
One comment:
Add Your Comment: Cancel reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
“Queries are unacceptable”
Recommended Reading: Willy Blackmore talking to Matthew J.X. Malady about the time he tried to be a literary agent.
Calvin!
“Calvin and Hobbes is certainly not a text about queerness, yet when I returned to it at this altered point in my life, the strip suddenly seemed to describe things that resonated with me now: what it was like to live in a world where expressing your realest self is so often penalized, and the value of finding a second family, a close friend or friends, if your blood family fails to understand or accept the truest version of you.” Gabrielle Bellot at The Literary Hub explains why Calvin and Hobbes is great literature.
●
●
Raymond Chandler’s Hollywood Star
Next year, Raymond Chandler will receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The award will be in recognition of The Big Sleep author’s work as a screenwriter. Other inductees in Chandler’s class will include Will Ferrell, Daniel Radcliffe, and Julianna Marguilies.
●
●
Mislabeled
Can writers transcend race? LaTanya McQueen argues that labeling fiction as minority gets in the way of the story at The Missouri Review blog. Also, see our essay on the racial and gender barriers in the publishing industry.
●
●
If you can have “secondhand gun trauma,” then you also have to acknowledge the “gun deficiency” trauma of licensed gun owners that were caught obeying the law in “no gun” zones when a criminal let loose.