Best of the Week: September 12 – 16, 2016

TODAY: In 1883, poet and plum thief William Carlos Williams is born. 

• “During her Sunday writing stints, the author, 45, takes a break from the shadowy side of human nature to step into the light of a neighborhood she loves.” A weekend with Megan Abbott. | The New York Times
• It can be stressful, but it is definitely good for the crime writing: An interview with PI/writer Patrick Hoffman. | GQ
• Examining the body, language, and the language used to describe the female body: On the poetry of Monica Youn. | Hyperallergic
• The shortlist for the Man Booker Prize has been announced, including Paul Beatty, Deborah Levy, and Ottessa Moshfegh. | The Man Booker Prize
• Know your characters, distance yourself, and ignore tips: Jeanette Winterson, Claire Messud, and other authors share their best writing advice. | The Guardian
• Nick Flynn and Roy Scranton discuss the poetry of war, choosing not to discriminate between reality and fiction, and attempting to understand what we cannot forget. | Tin House
• “For headstrong women who know their own desires, growing up in conventional society sometimes feels like inhabiting a haunted house.” On the writing (and Ruth Franklin’s new biography) of Shirley Jackson. | The Atlantic
• On Donald Trump and freshmen writing: How the “Trumpian goal of winning has infected the American student essay.” | Guernica
• “There are so many white women speaking honestly and writing confessionally that just doing it no longer can be called revolutionary.” On Jennifer Weiner’s recent comments on the selection for Oprah’s Book Club. | The Huffington Post, Jezebel
• “I have been writing this story my whole life. Every single novel, this is the story that I write.” Belinda McKeon interviews Ann Patchett. | Los Angeles Review of Books
• Teddy Wayne and Alexandra Kleeman discuss assembling fictional people, the gravity of physiology, and emotional logic. | Salon
• “To perform analyses like these on Nguyen’s poems… is to be left with frayed ends.” On the poetry of Hoa Nguyen. | The Boston Review
• A rejection like that from a man like that is enough to keep a young writer going: Ursula K. Le Guin on her first attempt at a novel. | The Paris Review
• “I know that you cannot judge a book by its cover as surely as I know that the cover gives some clue to the story within.” Rumaan Alam attends a fashion show and reflects on the role clothing plays in self-narrativizing. | Elle
• “For those of us whose identities—racial, sexual, and cultural—have branded us as others throughout our lives, her smirks went straight through like a bullet.” Suki Kim on Lionel Shriver’s controversial keynote address and its aftermath. | The New Republic

And on Literary Hub:

• Ron Rash on writing to bring out the dead and discovering the stories that need to be told.
• How do we fix the MFA? Toward a better creative writing degree.
• Real-life British spies did not like John Le Carré.
• On the celibate love affair of Nora Ephron and Mike Nichols.
• How to be a writer: ten tips from Rebecca Solnit.
• And in an entirely different direction, Teddy Wayne is worried he might be a fraud.
• Kate Beaton applies her graphic genius to the tyranny of babies: the Hark, a Vagrant! creator knows her audience.
• How my grandmother’s cookbook made me a writer.
• Affinity Konar in Poland, revisiting the hardest scenes from her novel.
• Introducing: bookselling in the 21st century, a new series about the state of the independent bookstore.
• Why I’m starting a publishing house in Romania.
• Alan Moore goes (very very) big with Jerusalem: on the ongoing ascendancy of the very long novel.
• Toward new versions of a traditional family: Belle Boggs on the next frontier of LGBTQ rights.
• Etgar Keret on time travel, TV, and writing about his father: the author of The Seven Good Years talks to Paul Holdengraber.
• Lauren Groff on which books unhealthily reset her brain and her drive to Netflix.
• Me and JT LeRoy: on anonymity and queer art.
• Finding the unsayable in translation: Michael Helm on Javier Marías, Roberto Bolaño, and a double dose of defamiliarization.
• Four never before published stories by the great Robert Walser.
• Dear Rick Moody, life coach: why do men spinster-bait?
• Pat-downs, pissing, and passport stamps: three short essays from the anthology Airplane Reading.

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