Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘Celeste Ng’

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Ann Patchett bests Stephen Colbert

It doesn’t happen often—a guest getting the last word on The Colbert Report?  But it happened just earlier this week, when author Ann Patchett came on the show to explain why she helped open Parnassus Books in Nashville: because she was horrified that her town had NO bookstores. I was lucky enough to hear Ann Patchett in person, at the Muse and the Marketplace conference in Boston a few years ago, and I was impressed by how sharp she was—for example, she delivered a witty and inspiring keynote address without a single page of notes.  (I wish I were cool […]


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What is the… What?

Okay, let me walk you through this one. The Thing Quarterly is a “periodical in the form of an object.” Says its site: Each year, four artists, writers, musicians or filmmakers are invited by the editors (Jonn Herschend and Will Rogan) to create a useful object that somehow incorporates text. This object will be reproduced and hand wrapped at a wrapping party and then mailed to the homes of the subscribers with the help of the United States Postal Service. The most recent issue (Issue 16) is a work by Dave Eggers in the form of a shower curtain. The […]


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10 Social Networks for Writers

We’ve talked before about the love-hate relationship many writers have with Facebook. On the one hand, it allows writers to connect with friends, fellow authors, and fans, making that whole writing thing feel a little less lonely. On the other hand—timewasting! timewasting! timewasting! Maybe you want to spend time on a social network and feel productive. In that case, Mashable has compiled a list of 10 social networks geared specifically towards writers. From Inked-In to Writertopia to We Like to Write, each offers different support to writers: critiquing, paid work, or just a community of other writers. Do you know […]


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"On behalf of the American people, we simply want to know what it is you'd say you're about, in a nutshell."

The Onion must have some book-lovers on staff these days—because their literature-related headlines of late have been painfully funny. See their latest, “Miranda July Called Before Congress To Explain Exactly What Her Whole Thing Is.” You should really just read the whole thing, but—okay, here’s a little taste: Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) at one point attempted a drastically different style of questioning in which he clearly explained to July what his own whole thing is in hopes that she would reciprocate in a way that everyone could understand. “Perhaps we’re approaching this in the wrong way; Ms. July, when I […]


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How to Hatch a Novel

Most writing classes revolve around the workshop—but the workshop format, in which participants usually read 25-30 pages of a student’s work and then critique it as a group, is ill-suited to the novel form, where 30 pages may not even be a full chapter. Is there a better way to give feedback on a novel-in-progress? Grub Street, Boston’s independent writing center, aims to find out with an experimental new course dubbed the “Novel Incubator.” (Disclaimer: I have taught for Grub Street, but have not been involved in the novel course.) Billing itself as a “year-long MFA-level course, team-taught by two […]


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Robots Writing Novels?

So a monkey typing into infinity will eventually produce Shakespeare—or so the theory goes. Maybe robots would be faster? The New York Times recently discussed the phenomenon of robots writing books. After an encounter with a robo-writer called Lambert M. Surhone—literally a computer churning out titles like “Saltine Cracker” and “Pagan Kennedy” from pasted-together online text—author Pagan Kennedy (yes) was fascinated and preplexed: Could robots ever be trusted to write original novels, histories, scientific papers and sonnets? For years, artificial-intelligence experts have insisted that machines can succeed as authors. But would we humans ever want to read the robot-books? Mechanized […]


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Imposter syndrome

When I first got to college, I was pretty sure that I was an admissions mistake. My roommate was one of Glamour‘s College Women of the Year. Another girl downstairs played piano with the Philharmonic; the guy down the hall was almost sixteen. A guy on the first floor held two patents. You get the idea. Even now, I occasionally get the feeling that I am a complete fraud, and I have no idea how I managed to convince people I had anything worthwhile to say. In my worst moments I suspect I will get a phone call rescinding awards […]


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A real page-turner

Joseph Herscher reads—but his Rube-Goldberg-esque machine does all the heavy lifting. The New York Times has a schematic–but the video is much more fun: Further Reading Watching: Books cavort in a bookshop in “The Joy of Books“ Busby Berkeley meets bookshelf Book dominoes!


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Picture books for writers (and their kids)

For a while now, I’ve been concerned about raising a kid who loves to read. Evidently I am not the only one, as shown by the BabyLit series of board books featuring Romeo and Juliet, Pride and Prejudice, and Jane Eyre. These books bill themselves as “counting primers”—the “Little Miss Austen” version of Pride and Prejudice includes pages like “2 rich gentlemen” and “3 houses” (that would be Longbourne, Netherfield, and Pemberly)—but they’re clearly intended to introduce at least the elements of these classics to young children. The forthcoming Little Miss Bronte: Jane Eyre features quotes from the novel, like […]


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"The writer is not the writing"

Recently, the New York Times tackled the burning question of why authors tweet. One main reason? To connect with the reader, of course: For one thing, publishers are pushing authors to hobnob with readers on Twitter and Facebook in the hope they will sell more copies. But there’s another reason: Many authors have little use for the pretension of hermetic distance and never accepted a historically specific idea of what it means to be a writer. […] Jennifer Gilmore (3,463 followers) finds hearing from readers helps her understand the influence her novels have on them: “On Twitter, I have a […]




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