The Books We Teach series will feature primary, secondary, and post-secondary educators and their thoughts about literature in the face of an evolving classroom. Posts will highlight literary innovations in teaching, contemporary literature’s place in pedagogy, and the books that writers teach. In the spirit of educational dynamism, we encourage readers to contribute their thoughts…
[Editor’s note: If your March Madness bracket got busted, never fear! You can now redeem yourself with our Fantasy Blog Draft Bracket! Starting June 11, our completed teams will be facing off against each other, with reader votes on Facebook determining the winners. Until then, you can pick your winners here. We’ll score your picks…
My husband Noel and I rescued Sally, our 110 pound Leonburger, from a shelter in Lincoln, Nebraska a little over ten years ago. She was about a year old when we found her. At the time, we had just moved out of Lincoln to an old farmhouse on twenty acres. Our wheaten terrier, Finnegan (since…
How can you avoid bad dream-writing? Part One of this post appeared on Monday. All right, let’s talk about the good things dreams can do for your writing process. Let’s have some nice dreams. Real-ize Your Dream Have you ever used a dream as inspiration for writing? George Saunders did this in “Pastoralia,” which, as he puts it,…
In our Roundups segment, we’re looking back at all the great posts since the blog started in 2009. We explore posts from our archives as well as other top literary magazines, centered on a certain theme to help you jump-start your week. This week we have posts on story endings. So you’ve got a great story, but don’t…
I had the strangest dream about you last night, my husband said. You were surrounded by wood. There were wood walls, floors. All this old furniture everywhere. Of course, a wife is keenly interested in her husband’s dreams, especially if she’s the star. But what struck me about my husband’s dream was its accuracy: I’m…
I dreamed of calves’ feet for two weeks, wondering if I could actually boil four of them in my kitchen. The goal? Homemade gelatin according to the recipe in Helen Cramp’s 1913 edition of The Institute Cookbook. I wanted to engage the cookbook the way I had the other vintage books, to get underneath the…
The Story of My Purity Francesco Pacifico Farrar, Straus and Giroux, March 2013 304 pages $26.00 I don’t know much about providence, but it seems extraordinarily lucky that Francisco Pacifico’s first novel to make it into English translation—a ribald picaresque of Catholicism, breasts, and a conspiracy theory wherein Pope John Paul II was a Jewish…
I’ve said it before: you have to play to win. And I’m sorry to say, in terms of the slush pile, “winning” is a bit of a crapshoot. To rise out of the slush pile you must submit and keep submitting. It’s a numbers game and resiliency and pluck pay off. And there’s the…
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