For Electric Literature, Amy Klein discusses being a debut author during the coronavirus quarantine, as bookstores close and events are canceled for the public’s safety. Despite her panic, she learns to get creative when promoting her new book, The Trying Game: Get Through Fertility Treatment and Get Pregnant Without Losing Your Mind. “Ultimately, this may not be as devastating for writers—or independent bookstores—as it initially felt to me,” Klein writes. “Authors can boost themselves, each other, and small bookstores on social media, and reach a captive audience who may be searching for distraction during a socially distant time.”
A Book’s Debut Amidst a Pandemic
Literature Isn’t Publishing
“In re-organizing the priorities of book publishing—by inventing new models rather than trying to repeat past success, by valuing ingenuity over magnitude, by thinking of sales as a way to make great books possible rather than the point—indie presses aren’t just becoming the places where the best books are published; they’re already there.” Over at The Atlantic, Nathan Scott McNamara writes on why American publishing needs indie presses. For more of his writing, check out his essay on Denis Johnson for The Millions.
Let Us Praise James Agee
“Every sense cleared about three hundred percent and stood up on its hind legs waving its feelers.” Eighty years ago, James Agee got an assignment that entered him into history, though not during his lifetime. Let us now celebrate Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. See also: our essay on famous artist-writer collaborations, like Agee’s with Walker Evans.
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Read Sugar?
Who is Sugar? Have you read her? Go Behind the Scenes of a Regular Sugar Reader.
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Write Away the Stigma
Check it out: Creative Nonfiction and Writing Away the Stigma are teaming up to put on a six-part writing workshop and fellowship for individuals who have been affected by mental illness. Twelve writers will have the opportunity to study, free of charge, with the founder and editor of Creative Nonfiction magazine, Lee Gutkind. Submissions are accepted throughout the month of November.
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A Hideous Play
“Titus Andronicus is a hideous play…. In other words, it’s one of those tragedies that was just crying out for an illustrated edition.” View Leonard Baskin’s grotesque etchings of Titus Andronicus in The Paris Review.
Building the Labyrinth
“When gender’s not there, it sort of leaves room for us to focus on these other differences—and most of them end up being insignificant, too.” An interview with Emma Ramadan, translator of Anne Garréta’s Sphinx, on writing, translating, and understanding genderless characters.
“Smudge between the lines, fill the sexy man up.”
Mark your calendars. Thrill Murray, a Bill Murray-inspired coloring book, goes on sale this August.
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