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“Confessional Writing” Is a Tired Line of Sexist Horseshit, And Other Insights
The following is an edited transcript from Red Ink’s panel discussion on literary misfits. Red Ink is a quarterly series curated by Michele Filgate; the next discussion, featuring Morgan Jerkins, Jami...
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Indies Recommend: Penn Book Center
As the nation’s only non-profit distributor, Small Press Distribution is dedicated to getting small press literature to the people who want to read it. As such, we’re grateful to our main...
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Watch Three Recent Whiting Award-Winning Poets Read From Their Work
It’s a testament to the Whiting Awards’s eye for brilliance that many of those honored by the foundation just last year already feel like household names. Last summer, the Whiting Foundation shot short...
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10 Books by Czech Women We’d Like to See in English
The fact that the translations we read in English are overwhelmingly by male authors is increasingly getting attention. For many, that realization began with Alison Anderson’s 2013 Words Without...
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Dennis Lehane Can Quote The Great Gatsby Endlessly
What was the first book you fell in love with? The Three Musketeers. A coming-of-age story wrapped in an adventure yarn with a strong satirical edge. Even when I was young, I could sense the subversion...
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In Praise of Juan Rulfo: Carmen Boullosa, Yuri Herrera, and More…
Born in the Mexican state of Jalisco, a region acutely affected by the violence of the Mexican Revolution, Juan Rulfo (1917-1986) was an unlikely candidate to become one of his nation’s most...
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One Day, Philip Kerr Will Finish Ulysses
Philip Kerr’s 12th Bernie Gunther novel, Prussian Blue, is available now. What was the first book you fell in love with? First book I fell in love with was probably Treasure Island by Robert Louis...
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About Suffering, Robert Lowell Was Never Wrong
New Yorker critic Dan Chiasson talks to Christopher Lydon about the great Robert Lowell, Boston’s poet of staggering emotion. This interview originally appeared at Radio Open Source. Dan Chiasson:...
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Sjón on Storytelling, Travel, and Defying Icelandic Isolation
In this episode, Paul Holdengräber talks to the poet Sjón about the importance of travel, keeping your audience awake, classical Nordic literature, the Future Library, and articulating the world. Sjón...
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Scott Turow on Rereading Herzog and Abandoning Joyce
Scott Turow’s latest book, Testimony, is available now from Grand Central. What was the first book you fell in love with? The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas, which I read during one of my many...
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Announcing the 2017 O. Henry Prize Stories
We are very happy to announce the O. Henry Prize Stories for 2017, edited by Laura Furman, which will appear in an eponymous anthology this September, from Anchor. “Too Good To Be True” by Michelle...
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All Writing is a Kind of Realism
Rodrigo Fresán was born in Argentina in 1963, spent much of his adolescence in Venezuela, and moved to Barcelona in the late 90s where—apart from a brief stint in the US as an Honorary Writing Fellow...
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What Counts As Standard? On Black English and Black American Sign Language
In the following conversation, John McWhorter, linguist and author of Talking Back, Talking Black, and Kia Corthron, playwright and author of the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize–winning The...
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Remembering Denis Johnson: “Anything is Possible and It Could Be Extraordinary”
On May 24, 2017, Denis Johnson, one of the great writers of his generation, died. We asked a few of his colleagues, friends, and former students to share their thoughts on what he meant both to the...
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Michael Frank on Avoiding Revenge Through Memoir
In this episode, Paul Holdengraber talks to the memoirist Michael Frank about his new book, The Mighty Franks, the lives we could have led, mastering a “line,” revenge, and searching for the truth in...
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Words Have Discovered How to Make Love: 3 Poems by Surrealist Masters
Whereas Surrealist art and film have achieved widespread success, Surrealist poetry has languished in their shadow. While generation after generation of poets has absorbed Surrealism’s lesson, while...
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Inventing a New Poetic Form To Honor Gwendolyn Brooks
Along with Ravi Shankar and Patricia Smith, I am co-editor of The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks (The University of Arkansas Press). The anthology is based on a new form...
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Amita Trasi and Cecilia Galante on Writing Young Characters
Both Amita Trasi and Cecilia Galante explore difficult issues in their fiction through the experiences of young characters. Galante’s most recent book, The Odds of You and Me, features a young mother...
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J.M. Servín Defies Stereotypes of the Mexican Immigration Experience
An anomaly among contemporary Mexican writers, who mostly come from resolutely privileged backgrounds, J.M. Servín is an autodidact who never went to high school. His novels tend to take place in the...
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Derren Brown on Magic in the Modern Age
In this episode, Paul Holdengraber talks to the mentalist Derren Brown about his new show, Secret, the “record” button, the Stoics, the skeptical mindset of his profession, false memory, coming out,...
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