At the Creative Independent, romance novelist and Shakespeare professor Eloisa James (whose real name is Mary Bly) discusses how she keeps her writing process fresh, whether it’s for her bestselling romance novels or academic texts. “If you’re going to have a long career in writing,” she explains, “you need to be constantly reading in your genre. What you’re going to write is going to change. It has to change.”
Constantly Reading, Constantly Changing with Eloisa James
“To look worse after a haircut”
Come on, admit it: you wish English speakers had a word for “one who shows up to a funeral for the food.”
A Matter of Survival
In 2002, the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, a Princeton professor and expert in judgement and decision-making, won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his research in behavioral studies. At the LARB, K.C. Cole ties his work to The Fate of Our Species, a new book by Fred Guterl.
Barbie Bodies
Peggy Orenstein, author of Girls and Sex, writes at Mother Jones about “hotness,” commodification, and women’s bodies.
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Authors Helping Authors
Debut author Maya Sloan writes a charming and heartfelt blog post about dressing up as a clown for Charles Bock’s Literary Rent Party.
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The Gray Salt Sea, The Wine-Dark Sea
Writing for Lapham’s Quarterly, Caroline Alexander takes a deep dive into Homer’s “wine-dark sea” to uncover the origins and meaning behind the poet’s “incomprehensible” phrase.
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Why Read Moby Dick?
Nathaniel Philbrick answers the question Why Read Moby-Dick: “the level of the language is like no other,” but also “it’s as close to being our American Bible as we have.”
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