“I wanted to explore how the uniquely female experiences of pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding might impact women who otherwise often try to resist traditional gender roles”: Polly Rosenwaike talks with Danielle LaVaque-Manty about her debut collection, Look How Happy I’m Making You.
I used to say that in order to get any writing done, I should hire someone to stand behind me with a stick and hit me on the head anytime I wasn’t working. I imagined someone along the lines of The Rock, or at least Queen Latifah, who embodied just such a character (more or less) in Stranger Than Fiction—a sweet movie despite its amazingly unrealistic portrayal of the writing life. “Motivator” might have been a good job title. Well, now I have a Motivator, but he doesn’t look anything like I expected. Trying to write while taking care of […]
Lily King’s three novels stand as testaments to the power and endless variation of familial relationships. King’s latest novel, Father of the Rain, tells the story of a daughter’s life-long, primal loyalty to her charming and manipulative father. Interviewer Joshua Bodwell discusses longhand, autobiographical influence, puppies, and how to depict realistic sex, with a writer whose work remains “a beacon of tenderness and sincerity.”
”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
Over at The Millions, Sonya Chung’s essay “The Mommy Problem” throws more questions at a question I’m still trying to answer. I, too, have indulged in her habit of close-reading women writers’ biographies for suggestions of children and clues as to their familial satisfaction to productivity ratio. While the argument over how writers should spend their time, money, and reproductive organs is endless, and as Chung points out, ultimately individual and unanswerable even through close examination of the examples we have, the question of how acceptable or manageable it is to be a writer-slash—whether that slash is a parent, a […]
