This spring I nearly declared a moratorium on violent fiction after reading three savage novels: The Orphan Master’s Son, The Sympathizer and A Little Life. Afterward life felt dirty. Basta! After all, the news is horrific: a toddler refugee washes…
A favorite feature of mine on the blog Writer Unboxed, is by editor Ray Rhamey, who selects the first page of a best-selling novel and asks, “Would you pay to turn the page of this best-seller?” which he then follows…
I suck and that’s okay. No. Really. I’ve been sitting here for a legit eight hours trying to come up with a decent draft for a single blog post. I kept attempting something clever and coherent and meaningful on Imposter…
My output is amazing during the winter. For me, cold, dark days are conducive to hunkering down and writing as is the soggy, cool springtime. But once warm, sunny, blue skies roll around, it is so hard to keep my…
Shakespeare did it. Flannery O’Connor did it. Jonathan Franzen does it all the time. Every playwright, short story writer, and novelist does it as a matter of course, yet there is still plenty of debate over the writer’s right to…
It’s said of the James brothers that William wrote philosophy like a novelist and Henry wrote novels like a philosopher. Something similar came to mind while reading Cynthia Ozick’s essay, “W. H. Auden at the 92nd Street Y” in her…