Round-Up: Writers Address the Next President, J.K. Rowlng’s New eBooks, and the New PEN/Nabokov Award
From PEN America’s new award to a new Harry Potter ebook series, here are last week’s biggest literary headlines.
J.K. Rowling
Books and Cleverness: Hermione Granger and the Glass Ceiling
We must thank Hermione Granger for the new trio of e-books from Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling available for download on September 6. The books are called Short Stories from Hogwarts and provide a user’s manual for poltergeists, politics, heroes and even a guide (although unreliable) to the venerable Hogwarts itself.
Round-Up: the Highest Paid Authors, an Out-of-Print Book’s Sales, and HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD
From the sales of the newest Harry Potter story to a list of the highest paid authors of 2016, here are some of last week’s most interesting literary headlines.
Round-Up: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the Man Booker Prize, and the Vatican Library
From the highly anticipated “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” to the announcement of the Man Booker Prize longlist, here’s some of last week’s hottest literary news.
The Work of Fiction and the Fiction of Work
A life is divided into three parts: the time before you’re able to work, the time after you’re able to work, and the monstrous bulk of time between. After obedience to the law and some basic moral code, work is one of the great demands placed upon the able. It’s inherently traumatic, a sacrifice of…
Round-Down: Historical Underpinnings of Continual Sexism in Publishing
Writer Catherine Nichols’ recent experiment, in which she submitted a manuscript to agents under a male pseudonym and received eight-and-a-half times the number of responses that the same manuscript received under her real name, confirms a gender bias in publishing that desperately needs addressing. Nichols is not without precedent in her experiment. Many famous examples of…
Harper Lee and the Politics of Genius in Today’s Age
The intensity of the reaction to news of beloved author Harper Lee publishing a sequel to her masterpiece, To Kill A Mockingbird, is ironic, given the very reasons we thought we’d never see this day come: Lee often proclaimed that her first book had said all she wanted to say, and that she was exhausted by the fame…
Literary Blueprints: The Byronic Hero
Follow this new blog series in 2015, where we’ll delve into the background of character archetypes–the Mad Woman, the Detective, and the Wise Fool, to name a few. In this first installment, we take a look at the Byronic Hero. Origin Story: In literature, the Byronic Hero’s first embodiment is Childe Harold, protagonist of Childe Harold’s…
Round-Down: The High Sales vs. High Quality Debate
One of my truly terrible habits is a reflexive desire to pour salt on a wound. Tell me your troubles, and I’m likely to say, “Oh, this is so much worse than you think.” For example, many editors and agents have said to me over the years, “I loved this book. I can’t believe it…