- Zosia Bielski, “In her new book, Kate Bolick argues why there’s nothing wrong with being a ‘spinster’” (The Globe and Mail)
- Mairead Case, “Draw Us Lines: Reading Harold and the Purple Crayon” (Bookslut)
- Elizabeth Gaffney, “Lorrie Moore, The Art of Fiction No. 167” (The Paris Review)
- Jenny Kleeman, “The Wikipedia wars: does it matter if our biggest source of knowledge is written by men?” (The New Statesman)
- Nicole Lee, “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: ‘Fear of causing offence becomes a fetish’” (The Guardian)
- Emily Matchar, “Sorry, Etsy. That Handmade Scarf Won’t Save the World” (The New York Times)
- Hannah Petertil, “Everything You Need to Know About Chili Pastes” (Food52)
Author Archives: Theryn
watch out, she’ll write a song about you
If a guy shares his experience in writing, he’s brave. If a woman shares her experience in writing, she’s oversharing. Or she’s overemotional. Or she might be crazy. Or watch out, she’ll write a song about you. That joke is so old, and it’s coming from a place of such sexism.
Some things I read this month
- Sari Botton, “The Perils of Writing About Your Own Family: A Conversation with George Hodgman” (Longreads)
- Michael Heald, “The Writer Runner” (Runner’s World)
- Dustin Illingworth, “Hating eBooks, Loving Life” (Full Stop)
- Adrienne Lafrance, “The Web is the Real World” (The Atlantic)
- Nick Ripatrazone, “So Many Hills: Writing as Training” (The Millions)
- Zadie Smith, “Some Notes on Attunement” (The New Yorker)
- Katy Waldman, “Frontiers of the Stuplime” (Slate)
some kind of emotional situation
[W]riter’s block is not necessarily because of a big blank moment in the brain, but instead some kind of emotional situation that is holding the writer back.
to find some new piece of myself
Everyone talks about “escaping” into a book, but even as a kid, the escape was never what I looked for. The characters might not resemble me in the slightest, the setting might be totally unfamiliar, but I’ve always hoped to find some new piece of myself–a string of words capturing my own feelings exactly. My favorite kind of reading is like looking through a window at a rainstorm: You’re staying dry, but once in a while, the light might allow you to see your own reflection out in it.
Some things I read this month
- The incredible true story behind the Toronto mystery tunnel
- Carmen Maria Machado, “O Adjunct! My Adjunct!” (The New Yorker)
- Mac McClelland, “How I Learned To Be OK With Feeling Sad” (Buzzfeed)
- Dani Shapiro, “Tweet, Memory” (The New Yorker)
at the edge between where language fails and where it’s at its most powerful
I think the names of colors are at the edge between where language fails and where it’s at its most powerful. … I used to go round the department when I was teaching at UCL, when I was writing Still Life, and try out not the big color words but the little color words. There’s a particular very subtle English language expert and I would say to her, If I put in malachite, what do you see? She’d say, I haven’t the slightest idea, and she didn’t know what ocher was, or gamboge, or viridian. Those people who do will have a completely different experience of what I’ve written from those who don’t.
life is evidence
This notion of investigation offers an alternative to confession. Its goal isn’t sympathy or forgiveness. Life is not personal. Life is evidence. It’s fodder for argument. To put the “I” to work this way invites a different intimacy—not voyeuristic communion but collaborative inquiry, author and reader facing the same questions from inside their inevitably messy lives.
culturally, we aren’t allowed to be sad even for a little while
Sadness can be legitimately problematic, absolutely. If your sadness comes from seemingly no place or even an obvious place but keeps you from participating in life or enjoying anything and refuses to abate no matter how long you go on letting it express itself, you of course can’t keep living like that. But culturally, we aren’t allowed to be sad even for a little while. Even when it’s perfectly sensible. Even when, sometimes, we need it.
Some things I read this month
- Joel Achenbach, “Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science?” (National Geographic)
- Hannah Gerson, “Calendars, Timelines, and Collages: Mapping the Imaginary” (The Millions)
- Mary Norris, “Holy Writ” (The New Yorker)
- Tony Schumacher, “Published at 46: ‘I’d blown the one dream I’d always had – of being a writer’” (The Guardian)
- Zadie Smith, “Life Writing” (Rookie)
- Tom Spears, “Why don’t people trust science?” (The Vancouver Sun)
- Julie Marie Wade, “The Rumpus Interview with Susanne Paola Antonetta” (The Rumpus)
The Remainder Table 