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Fiction writer Aaron Hamburger got more than he bargained for when he signed up for a class in food writing. Instead of simply learning about a new genre, he also learned some valuable lessons about the one he'd been practicing for years.
Authorities in Canada have approved the Penguin and Random House merger; Dani Shapiro discusses writing and distraction; GalleyCat details how self-published authors can sell their books at independent bookstores; and other news.
Amazon warns Apple handheld users there's a bug in the current update of its e-reader app; Open Culture features F. Scott Fitzgerald's tips for writing fiction; Paris Review Daily visits the venerable Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and other news.
With tips from Meghan Daum, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, Salon offers a guide to writing a memoir; The Love Song of Jonny Valentine author Teddy Wayne discussed the difficulties of self-promotion; David Fincher is in discussions to direct the film adaptation of Gillian Flynn's bestselling Gone Girl; and other news.
A new study suggests back-lit tablet devices may be the best choice for readers with macular degeneration; ten rewards and risks to consider before self-publishing; Jason Pontin explores how "authoring tools can suggest novel styles of writing"; and other news.
Benjamin Percy cautions beginning writers to avoid overusing backstory in their fiction, offering strategies for moving the story forward by slipping a character’s history into the dramatic present.
A new recording of Flannery O’Connor has surfaced; Edan Lepucki examines the defining characteristics of the literary fiction genre; the Guardian explains how to write the first draft of a novel in one month, and other news.
Fiction writer Benjamin Percy cautions beginning writers to avoid overusing backstory in their fiction, offering strategies for moving the story forward by slipping a character’s history into the dramatic present.
In the world of hip-hop, Lewis Turco would be considered an “Original Gangsta,” an “O.G.”—a title given to someone who started it all. In the more genteel business of poetry writing, however, Turco would be called an “Institution,” and what he started was nothing less than a renewed appreciation of poetic forms. Since its first edition in 1968, his reference book The Book of Forms has become a standard text for poets of all stripes. A cross between The Joy of Cooking and According to Hoyle for poets, Turco’s text remains a rarity: a reference book with personality. Turco’s lucid, empathetic entries on every form under the sun continue to serve many poets writing their first pantoums or settling drunken bets on the rhyme scheme of the rimas dissolutas (abcdef abcdef ghijlk ghijlk ..., if written in sestets).
