Wednesday’s Work-in-Progress: The Ongoing “More than Memoir” Campaign

CNF“But as much as I love memoir—in fact, we’re currently working on a memoir issue, due out next spring—I am sometimes frustrated that creative nonfiction and memoir have, in some ways, to some audiences, apparently become synonymous. As I see it, creative nonfiction is an umbrella term, and memoir is only one of the forms included under its shadow.”

These lines from Lee Gutkind’s “From the Editor” column in the latest issue of Creative Nonfiction, which I’ve been reading this week, resonated. Strongly. That shouldn’t be a big surprise to any longtime readers of this blog. But if it is, please return to this post from last summer, which I’ve been thinking about all over again thanks to Gutkind’s column.

Sunday Sentence

In which I participate in David Abrams’s “Sunday Sentence” project, sharing the best sentence I’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.”

Penn_Station1Its graceful Greek columns were sawed through and its great clocks, its carved-stone eagles, and the maiden sculptures that represented Night and Day were pulled down and taken over to New Jersey, where they were dumped in the swamps of Secaucus, like the body of a murdered mob stoolie.

Source: Kevin Baker, “21st Century Limited: The Lost Glory of America’s Railroads,” in the June 2014 issue of Harper’s. (Online availability for subscribers only.)

Again, I know I’m not supposed to offer context or commentary, but it was rather amazing to read about New York’s Penn Station, old and new (the “old” is the subject of the above-cited sentence), moments after departing from the “new” late Friday afternoon.

Friday Finds for Writers

Treasure ChestWriting-related resources, news, and reflections to enjoy over the weekend.

  • No-nonsense advice from “Margie” at Behind the Margins: “Wanna Quit Your Day Job? Economic Realities 101.”
  • “We call them Summer Submission Parties.” So begins Risa Polansky Shiman’s post for the Brevity blog.
  • More than 20 unpublished poems by the late Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda, most of them taking up romantic themes, have been discovered in boxes of his papers in Chile and will be published in Latin America and Spain in 2014 and 2015, according to reports from Spain.” No news yet about English translations.
  • D.G. Myers, for Books & Culture: “Perhaps the best examples [“of provocative and satisfying religious fiction”] are the work of two young Catholic novelists still in their thirties—William Giraldi and Christopher Beha.” (And then, a more personal essay by Myers on Good Letters, the blog of the journal Image.)
  • Finally, as a member of the Sara Lippmann Fan Club, I must point you to this new interview with Sara, which, as a bonus, presents the title story from her forthcoming collection, Doll Palace.
  • Happy weekend!

    Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat

    Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
    Every Friday morning My Machberet presents an assortment of Jewish-interest links, primarily of the literary variety.

  • Now available: the summer issue of the Jewish Review of Books (though much seems to be paywall-protected).
  • Lots of terrific material (no paywalls!) in the latest Jewish Book Carnival, too.
  • “ZEEK is proud to be launching a new summer fiction series” and seeks submissions. Deadline: July 1. NB: “Full disclosure: Zeek does not pay contributors.”
  • And speaking of fiction, Tablet has posted another piece in its fiction series, this time by Alexander Besher. Haven’t read it yet; hope to do so this weekend.
  • The Forward is hiring a Digital Fellow.
  • Shabbat shalom.