Is there anything more disrespectful to a book–and its authors and would-be readers–than burning? Book burnings are inevitably associated with censorship and repressive ideology, from the Third Reich to the more recent Quran-burning controversy. Even without those connotations, burning any book–for any reason–sends a shiver down my spine.
But can book-burning sometimes be justified? [...]
What if an agent agreed to represent your book–IF you changed the main character from gay to straight?
That’s what happened to writers Sherwood Smith and Rachel Manija Brown and their YA novel, Stranger, according to a post they wrote in Publisher’s Weekly:
Our novel, Stranger, has five viewpoint characters; one, Yuki Nakamura, is gay [...]
When I heard The Great Gatsby had been rewritten for intermediate readers, I did what many lovers of the novel probably did—checked the online version to see how my favorite passage had been changed, shook my fist, and then re-read the original, penciling all kinds of ecstatic remarks into the margins.
In case you missed Celeste’s [...]
You have probably heard by now that V. S. Naipaul issued a broad-handed diss to women writers, claiming no female writer could be his equal:
He felt that women writers were “quite different”. He said: “I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or [...]
We’re delighted to present the following post by Nicole Aber, our FWR editorial intern. Enjoy!
Last summer, I worked a few blocks away from the regal main branch of the New York Public Library near Bryant Park. During the interlude between the end of the work day and the start of a class I was [...]
My friends who are literary agents have told me about the many ways authors try to catch their attention: packages of cookies sent with their manuscripts; queries tucked into oven mitts shaped like sunflowers (of all things). But this might be the ultimate guerrilla book promotion: faking a kidnapping to promote your book. [...]
Which came first, the moody teen, or the YA fiction that moody teens often gravitate towards? Linda Holmes of NPR responds to a recent Wall Street Journal editorial that criticized YA fiction for being “too dark”:
I’m more intrigued by the aspirational nature of the quaint but sad idea that teenagers, if you don’t give [...]
What happens when you take The Great Gatsby and try to make it more “accessible”?
This:
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter–tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning—-
So we [...]
What’s wrong with these two sentences?
We will keep the book in our stacks for another two weeks. If you decide to order a review after that time, we will ask you to send another copy.
That’s from an email Chad Post of Three Percent received recently from ForeWord Reviews.
Yes, you read that right: “if you decide [...]
Last week, news sources everywhere reported that the popular blog “Gay Girl in Damascus” was not, in fact, written by a Syrian lesbian named Amina Arraf. Nor, as the blog claimed recently, had Amina been arrested by Syrian police. In fact, the blog was written by a 40-year-old American grad student, Tom MacMaster, [...]
