Friday Finds for Writers

by Erika Dreifus on
2

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

  • ICYMI: Thoughts (mine and others’) on litmag submission fees.
  • Intriguing post on what was new (and what was not so new) this seventh time Cathy Day taught her novel-writing class.
  • A reminder that there’s usually something interesting to read and learn over on the NYT “After Deadline” blog, which offers “newsroom notes on usage and style.”
  • Big congrats to John Vanderslice on the forthcoming publication of his story collection, Island Fog. Check these posts for John’s account of how this collection came to be written and found its publishing home.
  • And if you’re looking for a recorded literary event to enrich your weekend, check out this conversation between Junot Díaz and Toni Morrison, courtesy of The New York Public Library.

    • Have a great weekend, everyone.

    Wednesday’s WIP: On the Subject of Submission Fees

    by Erika Dreifus on
    40

    dollar-sign-mdOver on Grub Street Daily, Becky Tuch has a post about something we’ve surely all been noticing: “Increasingly, it’s the norm for lit mags to charge reading fees, anything from $2 to $5, in some cases $20 or more.” Tuch references a related Writer’s Relief post on “Literary Journals, ‘Reading Fees’, and You” and then shares what she discovered when she looked for what other writers are saying about the subject. “Are writers paying these fees? Are they resisting them? Why? Why not?” She collected a range of responses, which you can read for yourself.

    The end of Tuch’s post asks: “What do you think, dear hardworking writer? Is it fair to have to pay to play? Will all lit mags eventually charge reading fees? Will you never pay?”

    I was tempted to post a comment, but the comments were closed when I last checked. So here’s my response: (more…)

    Sunday Sentence

    by Erika Dreifus on
    3

    Another Sunday in which I participate in David Abrams’s “Sunday Sentence” project, which asks others to share the best sentence(s) we’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.”

    In addition to Reb Shimon’s Society for Morality in the Young, that town of three thousand Hebrew souls had a Society for the Dissemination of Russian Culture, a Society for the Dissemination of German Science, a Resettlement in the Holy Land Society, a Resettlement (Anywhere) Society, a Society for Talmud Study, a Society for Torah Study, a Society for the Study of the Prophets, a Sickbed Society, a Burial Society, an Interest-Free Loan Society, and a Society for the Dissemination of Knowledge Among the Jews.

    Source: “Fire Year,” in Jason K. Friedman’s story collection of the same title.

    Friday Finds for Writers

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled

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

  • Lots of good news from the (U.S.) National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) this week, especially for the recipients of the Creative Writing Fellowships. But even more of us are likely to benefit from the “Art Works” grants to presses and journals, whether simply by encountering writing that those grants will support or, in some cases, benefiting from the increased author/contributor payments promised by such publications as American Poetry Review, AGNI, and n+1.
  • Interesting issues raised in David Duhr’s “Hi! I Reviewed Your Book! A Twitter Guide.”
  • Great piece by Michelle Nijhuis for the NYT “Draft” column, on “The Science and Art of Science Writing.”
  • “Last October, after [Kaylie] Jones woke up one morning feeling particularly frustrated by the plight of many of her students and colleagues, who typically write artistic, literary novels not deemed commercially viable, she called one of her MFA students and her bosses, asking if they’d help her if she started an imprint. The answers were emphatic yeses.” Read more about Kaylie Jones Books.
  • “The 2013 Nobel Lecture in Literature was replaced by a pre-recorded video conversation with the Laureate: ‘Alice Munro: In her Own Words’, shown at the Swedish Academy on 7 December 2013.” I plan to watch the video this weekend; if you haven’t yet, you might want to do the same.

    • Have a great weekend, everyone.