The Wisconsin Book Festival kicked off yesterday, but tonight’s events begin the big weekend of readings, roundtables and other book-related offerings, starting with readings by Wisconsin authors Lorrie Moore and Michael Perry. Moore will read from her new novel, A Gate at the Stairs, her first novel in ten years; Perry reads from his latest [...]
Regular contributor Sarah Busse, together with co-editor Wendy Vardaman and advisory board members B. J. Best, Cathryn Cofell, Tom Erickson, David Graham and Angela Rydell, recently rolled out a print and online magazine, Verse Wisconsin.
Sarah and Wendy stepped in when Linda Aschenbrenner, a seemingly tireless supporter of Wisconsin poets, decided to retire and close up [...]
You’d think an article subtitled Should Creative Writing Be Taught? would offer some useful assessment of this question. But Louis Menand’s article in The New Yorker’s summer fiction issue doesn’t. After evaluating Mark McGurl’s The Program Era (Harvard, 2009) about the effect of creative-writing programs on American fiction, Menand leaves his article’s subhead entirely unanswered.
After [...]
“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”
Dorothy Parker
The ultimate guide to writing with precision and flair, The Elements of [...]
I’ve run across several wonderful videos at YouTube from the Authors@Google series. Apparently, Google hosts author visits on a regular basis. These visits are recorded and available online. Each one is about 45 to 60 minutes long, including a reading followed by a question-and-answer period.
I especially love the one above, with author Paul Auster. I [...]
Slate Magazine has some excellent book coverage this week, including Katha Pollitt’s review of Elaine Schowalter’s new book, A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to to Annie Proulx (Knopf Publishing Group), and Nathan Heller’s take on the new John Cheever biography, Cheever: A Life (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group), by Blake [...]
Katherine Center blogs here about the publication day for her second book. It’s a sweet and candid look at the joy of waking up to know your book is on store shelves today. I haven’t read either of her books, but really enjoyed this post, mostly because it gives me hope. Maybe I’ll have a [...]
My wonderful writing friend Shannon Jackson Arnold sent me a link to a Top 10 Blogs for Writers list compiled by Michael Seltzer at Writing White Papers. I’ve checked out a few, and they seem to be full of useful information for writers, ranging from inspiration and productivity to freelance writing opportunities. Check them out!
Shannon’s [...]
I’ve attended the Writers’ Institute, a three-day annual conference run by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Continuing Studies, on several occasions, and found the information really useful. The speakers are informative, and the writers I took classes with were also sources of both information and inspiration. In the first part of this interview, conference [...]
I’ve attended the Writers’ Institute, a three-day annual conference run by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Continuing Studies, on several occasions, and found the information really useful. The speakers are informative, and the writers I took classes with were also sources of both information and inspiration. In the first part of our interview, conference [...]