This summer, I have been awash in the fiction world. At least, as awash as I ever get, which is probably a bit more like a Wet Nap dabbed lightly over my brow. In June, I attended Writer Camp in Indiana once more. Last year’s was so magical that I couldn’t resist applying, especially […]
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I have at least five friends who have their own Wikipedia entries. I think at some point, I’d like a legitimate Wikipedia entry of my very own. I would also like to specify that I would like it to be about literary things and not because I tried to assassinate Elmo the Muppet or fell […]
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I’m having what The Boy calls “a crisis of confidence”. I don’t know that I would call it that. I think I would call it that I sometimes hate writing. And it’s not even that I hate writing. One doesn’t write for a living and then write after the work day is complete if one […]
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I’m a bad blogger. For those folks who won the contest (Ainsley, who chose Black Clock; Angela, who chose a Narrative VIP backstage pass; and Dawn, who chose a subscription to the very wonderful Missouri Review), you should hopefully all have received your first and perhaps even second issues by now and are enjoying the […]
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Well, that was eye-opening! It seems that my question of why writers don’t subscribe to the literary journals they hope will publish their stories is actually not so simple. There’s really two issues: why aren’t writers READING the journals and why aren’t people subscribing to them. Let’s break down both sides of that coin. Marne […]
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Once upon a time (actually, two times) I was the person who read your submission to a lit journal and decided yes, it was worth the fiction editor’s time or no, it started with an alarm clock going off so please no no no. I actually really liked reading the slush piles. It was a […]
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This one’s for the ladies! We’ve already covered how over half of all BASS stories came from the same 12 sources from 2005 through 2010, so let’s move to my pet peeve about the literary community: the potential for bias against writers who are women. I posted this graph in a previous entry, but since […]
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This is a true story: my friend Wendy (a different Wendy, I promise I’m not talking about myself in the third person or that this isn’t that split personality deal I talked about in this entry) once met up with me on Chicago’s Navy Pier a couple of years ago. We were drinking overpriced strawberry […]
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This post from Max Barry is too good to not share. It starts like this: This has been a great year for male writers, with women shunted aside for major prizes and all-new hand-wringing about why it is so. Because, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but male writers get taken more seriously. Also, stories […]
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This is Part One of a series analyzing the Best American Short Stories anthologies from 2005-2010. For part two, read “The top five best BASS markets for women writers (and five not-so-great)” I’m one of those creepy writers who are less right brained and more perfectly balanced brained. It’s possible that I have a […]
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