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.”
I’m going to be talking to a few authors whose first books I admired and see what they’re working on in terms of a second book. One of the things that interests me here is how writers move from a shorter form to a longer one. Talking about the process while in the process is…
Voting this past week was a return to the pitched ferocity of the first round, as both Benjamin Samuel’s The Mighty Duck Palahniuks (Electric Literature) and Michael Nye’s The Holden Caulbabies (Missouri Review) brought out voters in force. The two teams deadlocked at the end of the week, and again we were forced to undergo…
Christy Burch didn’t think she was a writer. This was before she worked with rape crisis centers and with the Kentucky Domestic Violence Association (KDVA), working with advocates statewide to support victims of violence. While in these roles, she was instrumental in the release and pardon of thirteen incarcerated, battered women. She also discovered her writing side:…