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 and websites, centered on a certain theme to help you jump-start your week.
If Grease has taught us anything, it’s that summer is the time for lovin’, and if your inbox has taught you anything, it’s that wedding season is upon us. Here’s a roundup of posts about the often volatile, sometimes emotional, and ever dynamic relationships between writers, readers, and work.
“…you’re getting this letter because you put yourself out there. Read it, think about it, and put yourself out there again,” advises Eric Weinstein in What Rejection Means to Me.
“Those first pages help me decide if the book and I would make a great couple. Do I want to take it out for coffee or tea?” muses Thien-Kim in “When Do You Break Up With Your Book?”
“Whether it is fatigue, disgust, or something in between, the breakup is because something is broken between the author and the reader,” directs Robin Bradford in It’s Not Me, It’s You: Breaking Up With An Author.
Remember, as Chekhov once wrote to a friend, “Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress. When I get fed up with one, I spend the night with the other.”
Guest post by Carol Keeley In an email exchange with David Gates, Jonathan Lethem writes: Hey, David. As I was saying to my 2,472 friends the other day, these certainly are strange times in the history of the boundary between the human persons and the written words. He goes on to describe his ambivalent…
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…
This past summer, during Grub Street’s Young Adult Writers Teen Fellowship (http://www.grubstreet.org/index.php?id=22), one of my students wrote a ghazal that left me speechless with awe and envy. She is fifteen. Most days during the three-week program, she wore flannel shirts, jean shorts, and black Gladiator sandals. Her shoulder-length brown hair had a streak of pink…