“My father wrote the story called ‘The Hartleys’ in which a little girl — who’s obviously me — goes on a family ski trip,” author Susan Cheever told The Writer’s Chronicle back in 2005. Although every detail mirrors the trip Susan took with her family, including her famous father, author John Cheever, one significant detail differs: the little girl dies. That, for me, was far more traumatic than if he’d written a nonfiction piece about that ski trip in which he talked about his fears for the little girl. To me, the fiction is much more dangerous, much more painful for …
“No matter how much a child might say they hate reading,” author Jacqueline Wilson says in anticipation of this year’s World Book Day, “there’ll be a book somewhere that they’ll love”. Although the annual event is still months away, Wilson and many authors – including Julia Donaldson, David Walliams, and illustrator Lydia Monks – are already banding together to scheme up new stories and debut titles to share with young readers. The authors are brewing up something special this year, and hoping their creative pursuits will not be in vain: their target this year? To give away one million books. Last …
The often cherished and equally despised romance novel, a source for eye rolling and gagging gestures for some and a favored genre for others, doesn’t immediately strike one as a platform for change. But, more prone to sexism and misogyny, it is a genre that pleads for mending and offers an opening to creatively restructure romantic relationships and modes of power. This ability to mend is a task many women in Kano, Nigeria are taking upon themselves. In the ancient city, women are gathering, talking, writing, and rebelling against oppressive cultural norms through the untraditional medium. The dominant Muslim extremist …
Combine the reader’s hunger for lurid descriptions with a millennial-inspired obsession with food porn. Throw in a photographer, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for some art worth rubbing your tummy over. Artist Charles Roux is doing just this, bridging literature, food, and art in his latest project, Fictitious Feasts. On the project the Roux writes: The motif of food is particularly interesting in so far as it deeply reveals everyday life and its rituals, or it is a landmark in in the storytelling. Giving life to the story, food can also define a character or convey another theme: it …
Writing is one of few pursuits that not only tolerates but urges a bit of isolation. It’s happy ground for the introvert, and fertile territory for the mind that operates best alone. Writing truthfully requires an observer’s eye – the wallflower’s shyness, the recluse’s hesitancy – but the quiet cast of personalities that produce notable works often falls short when it comes to transcending from author to protagonist. More often than not, the common protagonist is more gregarious, and more involved somehow in the larger framework of the novel’s world. If the typical protagonist mirrored the life of many of …
