Slouching towards Didion: the book blurb bywords holding the industry back

Didion-esque, Didion-like, Didion-ish: the shorthand for anything insightful written by a white, female author is turning Joan Didion’s perspective into a prescription and stifling literature’s diversity“Writers are always selling someone out,” wrote the young Joan Didion in the preface of her book Slouching Towards Bethlehem.This is the phrase, as the New Yorker once put it, that “everyone knows her by”. It is also a founding principle of the matrilineal branch of the “new journalism”, which, among its edicts of faith, were just the sorts of things that Didion modelled in that 1968 book of essays: an “immersion” in the lives of her subjects, a preference for “truth” over facts, and a diffident sidelining of the objectivity that defined the “old journalism”. Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2017-07-03 00:00:00 UTC ]

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Child authors discuss books, world records

Four-year-old author Saeed Almheiri discussess his book, The Elephant Saeed and the Bear, and his sister Aldhabi, 8, discusses hers, Here Was the Beginning — waxing poetic about its effect on classmates. Saeed has the Guinness world record as the... Continue reading at CBC

[ CBC | 2023-05-11 21:11:00 UTC ]
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What makes a good literary hoax? A political point, for starters

A true hoax provokes. It questions cultural biases, shattering conventions. But the curious case of the three men writing as a female author Carmen Mola does none of this. Continue reading at The Conversation

[ The Conversation | 2021-10-26 05:02:08 UTC ]
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Here’s the longlist for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Today, the Women’s Prize for Fiction, in collaboration with Bailey’s and Nat West, announced the longlist for its annual award, which recognizes and honors a female author of any nationality for the best novel written in English published in the United Kingdom in the previous year. The winner... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2021-03-10 20:25:29 UTC ]
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Here’s the shortlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

The Women’s Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize) shortlist has just been announced with a special video announcement on Twitter. The Women’s Prize is presented annually to a female author for the best original full-length novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom the... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2020-04-21 18:34:56 UTC ]
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Slouching towards Didion: the book blurb bywords holding the industry back

Didion-esque, Didion-like, Didion-ish: the shorthand for anything insightful written by a white, female author is turning Joan Didion’s perspective into a prescription and stifling literature’s diversity“Writers are always selling someone out,” wrote the young Joan Didion in the preface of her... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2017-07-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A female author's revelation: When the men stopped mattering

There are few things more revealing than a fervent hobby. If you expose someone's passionate pastime, you somehow learn more about him than the activity alone should reveal. Think Vladimir Nabokov's butterflies, or George W. Bush's portraits. As for me, I've practiced only one activity with... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2015-11-29 00:00:00 UTC ]
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