Some writers, I am given to understand, struggle because they have SO many FABulous iDEas, they just don’t know WHICH one to write FIRST! I am not one of them. My inner critic, who resembles a very angry prosecuting attorney, starts second-guessing before my first guess is fully formed, doing her best to demolish the [...]
Recommended Authors
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Today I received an Amazing Artifact. The Mod-Mod Read-In Paperback Book List was produced in 1970, under the auspices of the Young Adult Services Division, the precursor of the Young Adult Library Services Association. From the titles, it seems to be an ancestor of both Popular Paperbacks and Quick Picks. It was part of a project [...]
When I finished Jo Walton’s Among Others this afternoon, my first thought was: “Now I know how people who imprinted on mainstream comics feel about Jonathan Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude.” I loved Fortress of Solitude, but I was often aware while I read of references passing me by, or simply detonating with less force than they [...]
I just sent a contribution to the Nathan Wolfson Trust. If you knew L.K. Madigan, if you were a fan of her work, that is a thing you could do as well. I’m glad I had the chance to meet her through her friend and agent Jennifer Laughran, and glad, too, that we spent some [...]
There is a point when I’m working on something new when I can’t experience anything without seeing it through the lens of what I need for the new thing. I’m not going to talk about the new thing yet, probably not for a long long time. But here are a few items currently jostling together [...]
Ten years ago, I was part of a group planning an event that I couldn’t believe was going to happen until it did: Susan Cooper’s 2001 May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture at the Scottish Rite Center here in Portland. It seemed impossible that the person who’d written my beloved, frequently-reread The Dark Is Rising sequence [...]
The other night I went to hear David Levithan read from The Lover’s Dictionary at Annie Bloom’s Books. The Lover’s Dictionary is, as you may know, a novel in the form of dictionary definitions. It was an excellent reading from a concise and elegant book. The book is especially well-suited to readings, since each entry [...]
Sometimes when friends return borrowed books, I feel compelled to reread them right away, to welcome them home. Tove Jansson’s Fair Play came back recently. It was an especially fast reread because it’s so short and clear, not a wasted word, a credit both to her and to translator Thomas Teal. Fair Play is connected [...]
This is the sort of thing that people have Tumblrs for now, I know. Just pretend this is a Tumblr post, okay? Because I find this sentence from the introduction to the Paris Review’s Art of Fiction interview with James Thurber so delightful I am compelled to share: “Opening the interview with a long history [...]
Have you read Jenny Davidson’s The Explosionist and Invisible Things? If you haven’t, I suggest you go do that and then come back because portions of this interview contain OMG SPOILERS!!! Here, let me make it easy: If you need more persuasion, let me tell you that the books take place in a world where [...]
