Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘twitter’

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Twitter-ary Analysis

by Celeste Ng

Still not convinced that “Twitterature” is an actual art form? TIME magazine’s James Poniewozik has put together the most compelling analysis of Twitterfiction I’ve seen yet: Like any other kind of literature, Twitter lit — or Twitterature, to borrow the title of a recent book that condensed literary classics into tweet form — has its strengths, rules and tropes. Twitter is pure voice, an exercise in implying character through detail and tone. Halpern’s inaugural @shitmydadsays tweet is so economical that it should be taught in writing workshops: “‘I didn’t live to be 73 years old so I could eat kale. […]


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50 Book People to Follow on Twitter

by Celeste Ng

The Huffington Post recently published a list of “The 50 Best Book People to Follow on Twitter.” Those on the list include everyone from veteran authors Margaret Atwood and Anne Rice to up-and-comers like Colson Whitehead. There are plenty of agents, editors, and book bloggers, too, as well as book sites like GalleyCat and Guardian Books. These bookish Twitterers offer thoughts on current events and life in general and favorite writing-related links you might never find otherwise. A representative smattering: from Mokoto Rich, New York Times book editor: Looking at questions asked and not asked about latest incident of flawed […]


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The Best Sentences, One Tweet at a Time

by Celeste Ng

New York Magazine book critic Sam Anderson is running a literary Twitter experiment — and no, this isn’t a Twitter novel. In fact, it’s almost the exact opposite. Anderson tweets the best sentence he reads each day, and as he points out, “‘Best,’ in this context, can mean almost anything: funny, beautiful, enlightening, stylistically amazing.” A few of his selections: “Rain patters on a sea that tilts and sighs.” (philip larkin, ‘absences’) I think that at least a third to half of all MFA seats should be reserved for people with families. (junot diaz, panorama interv. w eggers) “But according […]


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Serial Fiction

by Celeste Ng

Serial literature might make you think Dickens, but it seems to be all the rage now. This being the 21st century, Twitter is a natural tool for serialization. In conjunction with Electric Literature, Rick Moody published a short story serialized into tweets, with one installment posted every 10 minutes. Reactions to the experiment were decidedly mixed, but its existence speaks to the renewed interest in the serialized fiction. Meanwhile, online lit journal Five Chapters publishes a short story a week, with one part of the story issued each weekday. And Daily Lit allows subscribers to read variety of books–from Tom […]


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is short the new black?

by Celeste Ng

Flash fiction is rising in prominence both online and in print. (For an introduction to the form, see Sophie Powell’s review of The Field Guide to Flash Fiction.) Then came the six-word story trend. And now there’s 7×20, a Twitter-zine publishing short stories and fiction of 140 characters or less. In fact, 7×20 is just one of several Twitter-based short-story outlets. Mediabistro notes that such sites have been springing up everywhere. Some, like Nanoism, even pay. Here are four complete stories: She shows him her wedding ring and he just shrugs. I would be more interested in you if my […]




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