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The Wednesday Web Browser for Writers

by Erika Dreifus on
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  • The fact that I live in NYC by no means makes me an expert on literary life here. So I’m delighted to see the latest addition to the Poets & Writers City Guides: New York City!
  • I’ve just finished reading an advance reading copy (provided by Coffee House Press) of Ben Lerner’s novel, Leaving the Atocha Station. Since I have no idea when I’ll be able to offer cogent commentary of my own on this most intriguing work, I’ll point you to David Shields’s contribution for the Los Angeles Review of Books in the meantime. (But stay tuned: I do have a review of another Coffee House book in the works.)
  • Fadra Nally discusses “How to Get Unfollowed on Twitter.”
  • Another social-media tidbit: In “When Students Friend Me,” Cathy Day offers a sample text that other teachers might adapt to explain their social-media policies on syllabi.
  • I’ve read a number of commentaries sparked by the recent release of the film version of Kathryn Stockett’s novel The Help. Nothing is quite like Roxane Gay’s essay for The Rumpus.
  • Kelly James-Enger suggests “5 Ways to Take Your Freelance Career Seriously.”
  • Remember my explanation re: how I got to know author Rebecca Makkai? Here’s a lovely essay that Rebecca has written about the online community where we “met.”

    • The Wednesday Web Browser

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled
  • On The Quivering Pen, David Abrams presents Katharine Weber’s account of her first “rejection of rejection,” which also happened to lead to her first fiction in print—in The New Yorker.
  • The Writer magazine knows that you may have depended on Borders to buy your copies of the magazine. And the editors don’t want to lose you.
  • You don’t need to be a print subscriber, but you do need to register with the Writermag.com website to read what four current/recent writing students–two in traditional MFA programs, one in a low-res program, and one in PhD program–have to say about their experiences (and what they wished they’d known ahead of time).
  • Over on The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s site, Alan Jacobs argues: “We Can’t Teach Students to Love Reading.”
  • But here’s one way that we may be able to kindle a love for reading in the next generation. (Kindle. Get it?)
  • If your writing practice includes the teaching of college writing, you may want to check out this Q&A with the authors of The College Writing Toolkit: Tried and Tested Ideas for Teaching College Writing.
  • The 2011 Atlantic Fiction Issue is on newsstands now. And it’s online. There are several wonderful stories in this issue, including Ariel Dorfman’s “The Last Copy,” Sarah Turcotte’s “Scars,” Jerome Charyn’s “Little Sister,” and Elizabeth McKenzie’s “Someone I’d Like You to Meet.” (I admire Austin Bunn’s “How to Win an Unwinnable War,” especially for its glance back at the last years of the Cold War, too. But having grown up in New Jersey with plenty of friends attending the Governor’s School as rising high school seniors, I was perhaps unreasonably distracted by the idea of seventh-grade Governor’s School students.)

    • Quotation of the Week: David Kirby

    by Erika Dreifus on
    4

    “All poetry begins as self-expression. But if I only write for myself, who’s going to want to read what I’ve written except me? I tell my students that, at some point, writing stops being self-expression and starts being communication, or it fails. Whether you read me or not, I’m writing for you.”

    –David Kirby

    Source: Kirby’s “Thirteen Things I Hate About Poetry,” in Lit from Within: Contemporary Masters on the Art & Craft of Writing, edited by Kevin Haworth and Dinty W. Moore, a book I finished reading this past weekend.

    Quotation of the Week: Stephanie Vanderslice

    by Erika Dreifus on
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    During my MFA program, I’d found many of the unspoken rules unsettling, but as a “good girl” I was adept at submerging such feelings without a second thought. I saw what happened to “bad girls,” who questioned the system, who demanded attention. Our teachers derided them when they left the room or at the bar after class. I knew I had a limited amount of time to learn what I could from this system. I had no intention of wasting my time trying to change it. Instead, I bowed my head, re-adjusted my blinders, and got to work.

    –Stephanie Vanderslice, Rethinking Creative Writing in Higher Education: Programs and Practices that Work

    Stephanie Vanderslice (a.k.a. Wordamour) may indeed have “bowed [her] head” and quieted herself–accomplishments that I, alas, did not manage back when I questioned how things “worked” (or didn’t work) in my own MFA program. But she never forgot her questions, and as a tenured professor she has become an expert in creative-writing pedagogy. I have recently had the privilege of reading her new book, Rethinking Creative Writing in Higher Education, and I am thrilled to announce that Practicing Writing will soon host an interview with Professor Vanderslice about it. Please stay tuned!