This is a story that ends with my name and begins, I’m sorry to say, on TikTok. In early 2020, I was spending a lot of time on my phone. This was a sweet if scary time in my life: I’d finished my MFA and my agent had just sold my first novel. All my […]
A few weeks back, The Washington Post ran a piece spotlighting “super readers,” a self-selecting class of book nerds who pride themselves on reading very, very fast. I clicked on this article even as my hackles rose, and some pre-programmed scorn settled in the back of my throat. Why, I asked the author, who could […]
Margaret Jacks Hall, Building 460 in Main Quad, is home to the Program in Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies. (Photo: REBECCA PIZZITOLA/The Stanford Daily) Two creative writing lecturers requested anonymity due to fears of professional retaliation. Pseudonyms and gender neutral pronouns were used to protect sources’ identities and improve readability. Rose Whitmore, a former Jones […]
“I TRY SO HARD to be in the future,” Francis Ford Coppola told biographer Sam Wasson for 2023’s The Path to Paradise: A Francis Ford Coppola Story , “and always I’m pulled back by the past.” The director of The Godfather Trilogy (1972–90) and Apocalypse Now (1979) has spent decades with his gaze fixed in […]
Writing and surfing can certainly be compared in analogy. But like climbing, surfing has long lent itself to the written word, with Pulitzer-winning scribes among the wave-riding tribe. Photos: Unsplash Regardless of whether you’re reading Matt George , Lauren Hill , Don Winslow or William Finnegan ; or jotting down a few notes about your […]
AI depiction of Hellanicus of Lesbos. Credit: DALLE for the Greek Reporter Hellanicus of Lesbos was born around 480 BC on the Greek island of Lesbos. He was one of the earliest and most prolific Greek logographers of the 5th century BC, paving the way for some of the great writers who came after him. […]
Book Marks logo Our feast of fabulous reviews this week includes Sam Sacks on Colm Tóibín’s Long Island , Maggie Shipstead on Elizabeth O’Connor’s Whale Fall , Lara Feigel on Maggie Nelson’s Like Love , Jennifer Wilson on This Strange Eventful History , and Lauren LeBlanc on Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time . Brought […]
Jayne Anne Phillips exploded onto the American literary landscape with Black Tickets , a short story collection that remains so compellingly singular that it ought to function as a handbook for short story writers. It was published in 1979, but I didn’t know of it or read any of its electric stories until some 25 […]
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. […]
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 […]
