I ordered The Cosmopolitans after hearing Sarah Schulman at an AWP panel with the gloriously strong and trenchant Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore. I was proud of myself for finally getting around to the work that launched Schulman's career as a novelist and public intellectual in 1990. But about 100 pages into The Cosmopolitans, the sort of insight and anxiety around race, marketing,…Read more The Cosmopolitans by Sarah Schulman
Ventures
Edmund White’s recommendations
The grand dame of gay letters, Edmund White, published The Unpunished Vice: a Life of Reading back in June, and I'm pleased to report to all who care that the 78 White is just as trenchant and charming as the 19 White who witnessed Stonewall.
Best cafes/museums to write at in NYC
For my Columbia Publishing Course peeps, here's a list in progress: JAVA The Chipped Cup (Hamilton Heights/ Harlem) 🙂 friendly environment get there early enough and you'll find a seat amazing coffee 😦 can get crowded near 148th/broadway--not an unsafe era (I lived there for a year) but needs some aesthetic tlc; you may want…Read more Best cafes/museums to write at in NYC
1 swell paragraph from Joan Didion
Swam through Joan Didion's "South and West," scattered notes and essays (mostly about visiting the south) and came across this gem. For me basically confirms why she's the best:
Journal vs. Diary vs. Notebook
Not necessarily for the better, but the form of a journal nudges your thinking into becoming more linear, in-depth, focused, and comprehensible for a reader with a quick eye and probable impatience. It encourages that word that most writers hate yet desperately need—discipline.
Review! Maggie O’Farrell’s 17 Brushes with Death
O'Farrell brings the reader into her experience, our common experience, and makes them shiver with wonder and delight that they have (for the time being) escaped, as Dickens put it, Our Mutual Friend.
What’s the difference between personal narrative and memoir?
Personal narrative vs memoir This goes out to my writing students who scratch their head over my presumptuous ass throwing “personal narrative” and “memoir” around like they should automatically know the differences. In my understanding, personal narrative is using your life’s story to illume some larger issue: mental health, intersectional, feminism, racism, nature, border walls.…Read more What’s the difference between personal narrative and memoir?
