Fellow NYCers and fans of Fiction Goddess Eudora Welty, this one’s for you. Today at 2 PM, curator Sean Corcoran will lead a tour (free with museum admission) of the Museum of the City of New York’s exhibition Eudora Welty in New York: Photographs of the Early 1930s. For more information on today’s event, read this, and to learn about the exhibit itself (which runs through February 16) and teaser photos, go here.
This is just a happy little note to say that FWR will be at AWP in February 2009; this year, the conference is in Chicago. We won’t have a table of our own or a listing in the program, but we will be operating in guerrilla-style from a corner of the Michigan MFA table, spreading the Fictional Word with mugs and T-shirts and business cards (and possibly a working laptop). I’ll be actively looking to make publisher contacts, to recruit writer-reviewers, to meet authors, and to boost readership. If you’re going to be at the conference, let me know if […]
In Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth, the most sharply drawn, most enticing character is contemporary Beijing itself, its “cramped side streets where the walls were like the scales of fish–tall shelves tightly packed with pirated discs.” The city and the promise behind it sparkle in Guo’s descriptions, which are sharp, fresh, and free of clichéd exoticism.
FWR’s super-amazing designer Marissa is doing some site maintenance/improvement work this weekend (because she is the Patron Saint of Fiction). I want to assure readers who have emailed to say, “Help! A review is also listed on the blog!” (or similar) to have no fear; everything will be restored to its rightful place – and look even nicer – in the end. Thanks, Marissa!!
This fascinating Atlantic article by psych professor Paul Bloom explores the idea that each of us has multiple selves vying for control of the body and mind they inhabit. It’s also a rational (yet somewhat radical) take on creativity; see p. 2 for related ruminations on fiction.
Thank you, Guardian! They published this on the eve of the election.
At least today, words can’t capture what this election day means to our country and to the entire world. We hosted a party, hollered and cheered with hoards of fellow Brooklynites in the streets till nearly dawn, yawped from the rooftops, hugged strangers, wept. It may be a few days before I come down from this real, real high and can think about fiction. OBAMA!!!
In case there’s a long line, bring some election-themed litereature; the Picador blog has a few suggestions, along with a lament that there aren’t more novels in this genre. To explain voting to the little ones, here’s a list of children’s books about elections. Also check out Jon Meacham’s essay “How to Read Like a President,” in which he discusses the reading habits of past presidents, Barack Obama, and John McCain. What do each candidate’s favorite books say about how he sees the world or might lead this country? Now stop reading this, all you writers and readers; go out […]
All Things Considered: How do the undead in the Twilight series and HBO’s True Blood measure up to classic vamps? And why are vampires such a popular fixation in film and fiction?
A writer friend and I were talking the other day about our book-tour fantasies; we’re both guilty–against our better judgment–of romanticizing the potential of this grueling marketing tradition as some kind of literary road trip, a 50-state (hey – why not 5-country?) bookstore-to-bookstore campaign. There might be a parade float with a literary salon atop it. The readers would pitch their tents outside at dawn, renouncing jam bands and iPhones, reading Housekeeping around the illegal campfire… Reality check: Yarn Harlot and Ann Patchett share ruminations and frustrations, while Teresa Mendez explores why author tours might be becoming “passé.” Anyone have […]
