At Bitch Media, Forsyth Harmon discusses her new book, Justine, which casts a careful, thoughtful eye on body image and disordered eating and its effect on the book’s teenage characters. “With this book, I was really looking to observe and record,” Harmon says. “I didn’t want to make a comment on the characters’ behavior as being either bad or good. I’m just doing my best to convey a lived experience in hopes [that] it would make others feel less lonely. That was my striving intention behind the way I approached it in the text and even [with the illustrations].”
Forsyth Harmon on Observing and Recording Without Judgement
Hilary Mantel’s Torment and Joy
In her Shelf Awareness interview, Hilary Mantel admits that Wolf Hall, her recently released Bring Up the Bodies, and the trilogy’s forthcoming conclusion were originally conceived to be one book. That they kept expanding, she says, is “the torment and joy of writing fiction.” Meanwhile, over at The Daily Beast, the English author rounds up her five favorite historical fictions.
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“The zeitgeist of OWS is print.”
Rachel Hurn, our other Curiosities blogger, has written a round-up of the recent Verso Books / n+1 Occupy! launch party.
Talking Seveneves
Recommended listening: David Naimon talks with Neal Stephenson about his new novel, Seveneves. Pair with Chris Barsanti‘s Millions review.
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Point Scoring
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Listen to a Genius
Recommended Listening: David Naimon’s interview with Karen Russell on Between The Covers. You can also find a transcript of the interview in the latest issue of The Missouri Review. Russell just won a MacArthur Genius Grant.
Draw Hard
Harold and the Purple Crayon is a classic children’s book. Is it also a writing guide? In an essay for Bookslut, Mairead Case explains why she re-reads it whenever she’s finishing a project: the main character’s need to create a room for himself is a corollary to the writing process.
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Prime Minister, Poet
A rare manuscript dealer has put up for auction a 10 stanza poem written (in crayon!) by Winston Churchill. The poem, entitled “Our Modern Watchwords,” is believed to be the only known poem written by the British prime minister in his adulthood.
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