Who Needs an MFA When You Have This Literary Fiction Trope Checklist?

Writing literary fiction stories? Forget what you’ve learned about complex characters and earned endings. What you really need is to include the required tropes. To help you out, we’ve created this handy checklist. Literary Fiction Trope Checklist _____ 1. Starts with character waking up _____ 2. Starts with character looking out of window, describing scenery […] The post Who Needs an MFA When You Have This Literary Fiction Trope Checklist? appeared first on Electric Literature. Continue reading at 'Electric Literature'

[ Electric Literature | 2019-07-26 11:00:50 UTC ]

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8 Eerie Reads From the Literary Fiction Shelves

While you're perusing the literary fiction shelves, create a haunting atmosphere with these eerie literary fiction titles for Halloween and beyond. Continue reading at Book Riot

[ Book Riot | 2019-10-31 10:40:16 UTC ]
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We’re All Terrified of Turning Into Our Parents

Few are able to plunge the depths of familial complexity like Jami Attenberg, and even fewer are able to reflect the nesting doll of desires, secrets, and contradictions the individual becomes when put into the context of family. In her seventh novel, All This Could Be Yours, the New York Times... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-23 11:00:35 UTC ]
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Gabby Rivera Wants Queer Brown Girls to Feel Seen

Gabby Rivera’s YA novel follows Juliet Palante, a Puerto Rican teen from the Bronx, who is reckoning with her feminism and queerness. After coming out to her family, she goes to Portland to be a summer intern for her favorite feminist author, Harlowe Brisbane. Juliet believes this will be the... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-21 11:00:58 UTC ]
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For Some Horror Writers, Nothing Is Scarier Than a Changing Planet

While literary fiction often sidesteps the climate crisis, eco-horror is filling the breach. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2019-10-19 09:00:04 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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Aging Gently, Messily: On Elizabeth Strout’s “Olive, Again”

SEQUELS IN LITERARY FICTION are rare. There’s a risk in returning to characters whose arcs have been resolved or purposely left in ambiguity. A second book may rob readers of the pleasure of imagination, thus undoing some of the magic of the original novel. But sometimes a character so compels... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books

[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-10-16 17:00:57 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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Ed Needham: ‘Top editors’ jobs have all vanished’

The founder and editor of literary magazine Strong Words on his appetite for tales of financial chicanery and why he won’t be returning to Jane AustenEd Needham is the editor of Strong Words, a magazine about books that he writes and edits on his own from his flat in Camden Town, a feat that has... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2019-10-05 17:00:51 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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Hamish Hamilton scoops Avni Doshi's 'sharp' betrayal novel

Hamish Hamilton has bought a book by author Avni Doshi, billed as “a sly and searing debut from an unmissable new voice in literary fiction”. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2019-09-13 07:57:52 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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