I recently taught a workshop called Bewitch Me: Sweeping the Reader Away. This topic came about when I started pondering “What is the single most useful thing I can offer a beginning writer in a short period of time?” and what came to me was this: When we read a spellbinding work of literature that …
Let’s tinker in the guts of books! Welcome to Part 1 of a series called Gears & Ghosts, in which I cozy up with a stack of novels and figure out how they work, like a curious mechanic poking around various well designed haunted house rides. If you’re wondering why anyone would want to do this, …
A poet friend and I were comparing notes on the writing process recently—sublime fun for nerds. I’m mostly a novelist/essayist, but I secretly write poems sometimes (I guess it’s not a secret now), and I was curious how real poets revise their work. I say “real poets” in contrast to weirdos like me, whose poems …
When I was 19 years old, I started writing a novel about a tattoo artist named Gina Mulley. Over many years and 15+ drafts, almost everything about the book has changed. But its soul is intact, and Gina Mulley the tattoo artist is still here, and I’m here too, with this good news: My novel, Jobs …
“If I’m going to tell you the story of how I lost two people who were closer than blood to me, I have to begin here in Dennett, Texas, during the summer between the sophomore and junior years of my life. This story begins as it ends, with me, Cirilo Izquierdo, waiting for what all …
I have observed: The raising of both novels and toddlers involves urgency and mess. Both yell cryptic phrases at you, which they expect you to decipher and translate to the rest of the world. Both involve days of difficult, unpaid work that is, for years, invisible to the rest of the world. Also: Both will …
This week in The Common I reviewed a fabulously weird debut short story collection called Valparaiso, Round the Horn, by Madeline ffitch. And when a book is this rich in playful detail, it’s really challenging to choose just one title for your blog post. Rejected titles: Burning Your Grandfather’s Body × Feral Pigs and You × …