What the hell happened at Readers Take Denver, the “Fyre Festival of Books?”
Social media has been in an uproar after last month’s Readers Take Denver, when thousands of authors and readers arrived in Denver, Colorado for what was billed as a weekend of events, signings, and meet-and-greets with authors. But RTD (not to be confused with “Regional Transportation District,” Denver’s public transit system) was instead a disaster. […]
7 Heart-Wrenching Chinese Family Sagas
When I first decided to write my novel, “Their Divine Fires,” I knew I wanted to draw on and honor the stories of my grandmother and mother. In the early 1900s, my grandmother’s uncles joined the Communist Party and fought to protect their country against warlords and Japanese soldiers. Decades later, my mother witnessed the […]
Writing With “Sprezz.” On the Art of Saying Just Enough
You might have heard about sprezzatura. Baldassare Castiglione, in The Book of the Courtier, defined it as “a certain nonchalance that shall conceal design and show that what is done and said is done without effort and almost without thought.” That was 1528. You might have read about it more recently in the New Yorker, […]