Is It Okay If I Don’t Care About Making Money from Writing?

The Blunt Instrument is an advice column for writers. If you need tough advice for a writing problem, send your question to [email protected]. For early access to Blunt Instrument columns, plus a special subscriber-only edition every other month, become a supporter of Electric Literature on Drip! Dear Blunt Instrument,  I’m a young writer who has spent the past three […] The post Is It Okay If I Don’t Care About Making Money from Writing? appeared first on Electric Literature. Continue reading at 'Electric Literature'

[ Electric Literature | 2019-07-30 11:00:37 UTC ]

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Am I Allowed to Break Up with My Book Agent?

The Blunt Instrument is an advice column for writers, written by Elisa Gabbert (specializing in nonfiction), John Cotter (specializing in fiction), and Ruoxi Chen (specializing in publishing). If you need tough advice for a writing problem, send your question to [email protected].... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-18 11:00:04 UTC ]
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Betches' Aleen Kuperman on explaining new media to immigrant parents—and not wanting to write about 'The Bachelor' again

Aleen Kuperman is co-founder and CEO at Betches Media. The company has grown from a blog created in a dorm room at Cornell in 2011 to a sprawling media network including nine podcasts, New York Times-bestselling books and millions of Instagram followers. In this episode of the “Ad Block”... Continue reading at Advertising Age

[ Advertising Age | 2019-10-18 09:01:00 UTC ]
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7 Literary Icons Who Moonlighted as Children’s Authors

When I think of literary authors, I often imagine my college reading list — and my lecturer’s pontifications on how their books have been meticulously etched into the canon of cultural significance. I rarely think about storytime with Mom and Dad. So would you believe it if I told you that Nobel... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-11 11:00:05 UTC ]
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Uber Can Go Fuck Itself

The Older Brother in Mahir Guven’s debut novel drives for a ride-sharing service in Paris while his Syrian-born father is an old-school taxi driver. Their Uber politics conflict is further sullied by their religious divergence. Into this, Guven adds a Younger Brother, a talented nurse who could... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-08 11:00:58 UTC ]
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9 Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories about Music

Translating one medium into another is tricky. Music is music and art is art and dance is dance; to try to convey the power of another art in fiction is its own sleight-of-hand. My own first novel takes on that challenge. In A Song For A New Day, musician Luce Cannon was on the cusp […] The post... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-07 11:00:15 UTC ]
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America’s First Banned Book Is for Sale for $35,000

If you have a spare 35 grand or so, you now have a shot at a rare copy of the first book banned in America. Christie’s Auction House in New York recently announced that it will be auctioning a copy of New Canaan by Thomas Morton, a 1637 political satire that caused outrage among New […] The post... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-03 11:00:38 UTC ]
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What Does Accountability Look like in the #MeToo Era?

Note: Masie Cochran is Jeannie Vanasco’s editor for her memoir Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl. “I’ll tell him: I still have nightmares about you,” Jeannie Vanasco writes early in her second memoir, Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl. The “him” in question is Mark, a man... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-03 11:00:04 UTC ]
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7 Novels about Americans of Color Living Abroad

Did you know that there’s an entire genre of books dedicated to white people going to Nepal to find themselves? I didn’t either! But it’s not so surprising since the release of Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir Eat, Pray, Love, and its 2010 film adaptation, which has caused an uptick in tourism to... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-02 11:00:13 UTC ]
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Queers Love Comics, and “Grease Bats” Loves Queers

When you meet Archie Bongiovanni, you may feel as though you already know them. The jorts, the stick-n-poke tattoos, the larger-than-the-room laugh that means you always know where they’re standing. That’s because Bongiovanni’s incredibly endearing energy winds up all over the page in Grease... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-09-27 11:00:50 UTC ]
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The 20 Best Debuts of the Second Half of 2019

It is next to impossible to read every debut book that comes out in a single year. Even for me, a person who has dedicated the year to reading as many debuts as humanly possible and interviewing newly-published authors for my website Debutiful. Every month, my to-be-read pile grows larger and... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-09-24 11:00:28 UTC ]
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How Brexit Could Destroy the U.K. Publishing Industry

In his poignant and strikingly insightful novel of 1956, The Lonely Londoners, Samuel Selvon shapes his narrative through the eyes of Caribbean migrants (now commonly referred to as the Windrush generation) upon their arrival to London post-World War II. His Trinidadian characters, having been... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-09-12 11:00:55 UTC ]
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Writing About Mental Illness from the Inside

Within the first week it was published, Bassey Ikpi’s essay collection I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Lying, a collection of personal essays illuminating and encapsulating the experience of having mental illness, hit the New York Times bestseller list. What Ikpi depicts in I’m Telling the Truth... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-09-12 11:00:01 UTC ]
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Where Are All the Memoirs About Abortion?

I scoured the parenting and pregnancy sections in Barnes & Noble, but the only books I could find about pregnancy exclaimed about it happily. I moved on to memoir, fingers running over the bindings of book after book. Where are the ones for women like me? I wondered. Women who don’t know... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-09-10 11:00:05 UTC ]
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Why It Matters That Amazon Shipped Margaret Atwood’s “The Testaments” a Week Early

Back in May, I signed an embargo agreement on behalf of my bookstore stating that I would “ensure that [The Testaments by Margaret Atwood] is stored in a monitored and locked, secured area and not placed on the selling floor prior to the on-sale date.” The idea behind such agreements is that... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-09-06 11:00:49 UTC ]
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10 Rejected Book Covers That Almost Made the Cut

We’re back with our rejected book cover series, where designers walk us through the process and show us the book covers that could have been. (For previous entries in this series, see here and here.) What kind of planning and thought goes into the cover design process, and what beautiful art... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-08-30 11:00:07 UTC ]
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20 Small Press Books You Might Have Missed

The small indie press boom is among us. In both 2017 and 2018, a whopping 40% or more of the National Book Awards longlists included titles from university and independent presses. It’s an exciting time for small presses— never before have there been so many diverse books in the mainstream... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-08-29 11:00:48 UTC ]
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This Cookbook from 1942 Is a Textbook for Making a Better World

My stove and I have been at odds for some time now. Beautiful and wasteful, it is the kind that is ubiquitous in Los Angeles kitchens of a certain vintage and which has chrome fins like a muscle car. And like those muscle cars, it is a gas guzzler. Aside from the standard four burners, […] The... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-08-29 11:00:20 UTC ]
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A Handbook for Fighting Racism in America

Ibram X. Kendi opens his latest book with his worst memory as a high school student competing in an oratorical contest. Having spent his short lifetime internalizing negative messages about Black people from Black people, from white people, and from the media and culture at large, Kendi... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-08-28 11:00:52 UTC ]
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7 Novels Set in Toronto

In the popular imagination, the idea of Canadian literature is overwhelmingly dominated by imposing landscapes: the vast emptiness of the prairies, a cruel wilderness that tests the limits of human survival. It makes sense that such settings would loom large––many of the country’s most... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-08-26 11:00:08 UTC ]
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A Nigerian American in Utah Strives to Be ‘A Particular Kind of Black Man’

Tope Folarin’s debut novel is all at once a search for identity, an immigrant story, and a bildungsroman. A Particular Kind of Black Man follows Tunde Akintola, a Nigerian American in a small town in Utah. Torn between the culture of his Nigerian parents, and the white Mormon culture of Utah,... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-08-21 11:00:12 UTC ]
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