Gunter Grass’ anti-Israel poem has caused such an outcry that Benjamin Netanyahu has already condemned it, along with hundreds of other intellectuals. The poem has only been published in German but The Guardian has translated and excerpted a few lines. The most thorough dismantling of Grass came from Anshel Pfeffer, writing in the Israeli newspaper […]
This is going to be the biggest children’s book since “Go the F*ck to Sleep”:
Matt Kish of “Moby Dick in Pictures” designed this incredible book cover for Robert Kloss’ “The Alligators of Abraham.” Below you can see his first attempt at the cover. But how much better is that second version, right?
I got 872 words a minute, but most other tests clock me at 700 or slower. Still, a nice little test. Source: Staples eReader Department
It’s been a week since AWP ended. If you’re like me, you still haven’t thrown out the things you collected from the main floor that were cool at the moment but quickly transformed into tchotchkes in the light of the real world. Say, for instance, pins. Yeah, every lit journal gave away pins with tiny logos […]
Excited for the AWP conference, only a few short weeks away. Authors! Readings! Schmoozing! Dancing! (Yes, there is the legendary dance party, happening … nightly). A whole host of literary heavyweights will be there, but as I’ve discovered from years past, the most exciting part of AWP is not the famous writers but the rank […]
The most painful situation the writers of this Velveeta commercial could come up with was … a male book club. That's right: talking about books with other men is equivalent to torture. Of course, the sidekicks are willing to suffer cheap medicine online through such torture to win the Velveeta prize. But who knows, perhaps […]
Here are the first two sentences of Aimee Bender’s “Bad Return” in One Story #158: “I met Arlene in college, in the freshman dorm. We were not roommates but suite-mates in the corner section of a squat brick house in the center of a small college campus in the middle of Ohio.” Pay attention to […]
In a writing workshop, a friend of mine once criticized Kazuo Ishiguro for his novel “Never Let Me Go,” which my friend claimed was a science fiction novel that refused to embrace its science fiction roots. It’s true that the science fiction conceits in “Never Let Me Go” are largely glossed over. Most of the book […]
