In this day and age, as a female “person of color” living in a first-world country, I have many opportunities to indulge in the love of Western progressives. Nonetheless, I invite you to look at the big picture, to stop…
Stephanie Gayle is a writing machine. Her third book in four years, Idyll Hands, hits the stands in early September. It is the most recent in her celebrated Thomas Lynch mystery series, following Idyll Threats and Idyll Fears. The Strand…
I’ve been a Rebecca Makkai fan for a while. Her first two novels, The Borrower (Viking, 2011) and The Hundred Year House (Viking, 2014) had me. Then she read an early draft of my forthcoming novel, A Bend in the…
This fall, PBS is running a program called “The Great American Read.” Earlier this year, they asked 7,000 readers to name their favorite works of fiction. The alphabetical list of 100 (not ranked) was then culled by a panel of…
Note: Except for posts from occasional guest bloggers, Dead Darlings posts are written by graduates of Grub Street’s Novel Incubator program in Boston. To find out more about the program, click here. This advice is poorly timed because the “new”…
Do you remember that John Cusack movie from the 80s Better Off Dead? It was a humorous take on a traumatic time in a teen boy’s life. His girl dumped him for the popular boy, and he was left rudderless…