Roundup: We Are Family

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.

Summer is here, and it’s the perfect time for family picnics, family barbecues, family visits, family… Writers, needless to say, have a long history of being inspired by family in many glorious and terrible ways. Here are some insights to remember (and some families to compare to) when you find yourself sighing heavily at the umpteenth outing.

From Ploughshares:

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  Jamie Quatro finds wise advice in the littlest ones in “The Writing Life: Five Things My Third-Grader Taught Me.”
• Patricia Caspers interviews poet Wendy Mnookin on her father’s death in “Hearing Voices: Women Versing Life presents Wendy Mnookin & Daughters Writing Grief.”
• When family can’t be near, “Who Is Your Writing Family?” asks Aimee Nezhukumatathil.
• The Ploughshares staff gives you a list of literary families you just might relate to in “Family Dysfunction: Some Tense Literature for Thanksgiving (Plus a Playlist).”

From Around the Web:

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  Nick Flynn (and former Ploughshares guest editor) talks to The Rumpus about the alcoholic father who inspired Another Bullshit Night in Suck City.
• Cheryl Strayed writes about the deep effects of her mother’s death in “The Love Of My Life” (from The Sun).
• Justin Torres gives Electric Lit some insight into writing the painfully devoted family of his novel We the Animals.
• Anne Lamott tells of her teenage son’s fatherhood in this NPR excerpt from Some Assembly Required.

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