Each week we give away several free copies of a featured novel or story collection as part of our Book-of-the-Week program. Last week we featured Damon Galgut’s novel In a Strange Room, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Alex Boyles, Kara Candito, and Joanne Wong. Congratulations! Each will receive a copy of this new [...]
Editor Jeremiah Chamberlin writes an appreciation of the work of his former teacher and mentor, Charles Baxter, on the occasion of the publication of his new book.
After its publication in 2000, the first edition of Betsy Lerner’s The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers became one of my students’ favorite writing books, and over time it became my go-to gift to graduating seniors with whom I’d formed a special bond, and whose persistence I hoped to bolster in those daunting years ahead. I even kept a small stash of copies in my office. So it was with great anticipation that I looked forward to this second edition, published in October 2010.
”The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.” —Cyril Connolly
Why do we love Sherlock Holmes? The famed detective nearly sent his creator off the deep end, and has been the object of countless films, odes, debates, letters, and pilgrimages over the past century. Through the lens of Graham Moore’s new novel, The Sherlockian, Lee Thomas muses on the problem of writing a character who outstrips his creator, and what makes us return to Doyle’s great detective again and again.
Maryann Yin reports in GalleyCat that a long lost Dr. Seuss manuscript is currently being auctioned at Nate D. Sanders. She writes:
The manuscript began almost forty years ago. The rhyme master wrote the first seven pages of the 19-page manuscript and an assistant completed the job. You can see Seuss’ corrections throughout the remainder of [...]
Liam Callanan uncovers the alchemy behind George Garrett’s final story, “Thanksgiving.” With each new twist, Garrett creates the mystery and momentum that spur us on to “read further, hoping to discover the answer,” writes Callanan.
“Whatever you do, stay in the room.” So advises Ron Carlson in his book on the craft of writing, appropriately titled Ron Carlson Writes a Story. He knows what world exists on the other side of the door: a world full of televised sports, dirty dishes, iced mochachinos. A world full of distraction from the task at hand. Writing, he argues, is about staying in the room, pushing beyond the point where your eyes glaze over and your fingers refuse to type. That’s where the magic lies.
I am secretly envious of Star Wars and Star Trek geeks, because they get to decorate their desks (and cubicles and shelves and windowsills) with action figures in heroic poses. It’s like saying to the world: I’m letting my geek flag fly. I also suspect that when no one is around, they play [...]
Dana Kletter sits down to talk with famed fiction writer Allan Gurganus. Their conversation ranges from sexuality to southerness, from his affinity for the 19th century to how reading the work of fellow writers can be a shaping force in one’s fiction, from gardening between paragraphs to Halloween political activism, and plenty more about teaching and the craft of writing.
