Caitlin Flanagan goes on a road trip through California — including Sacramento, Berkeley, and Malibu — visiting the homes of the late Joan Didion and exploring why her writing has had such a powerful effect on people. Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album created a new vocabulary of essay writing, one whose influence is […]
Writing
Posted inEditor's Pick
‘The Ways of Fiction Are Devious Indeed’
Sands Hall, a playwright and daughter of author Oakley Hall, digs into the work of Wallace Stegner — specifically his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Angle of Repose, which is based on the life of Mary Hallock Foote. “[W]e often fold in the real with the invented,” writes Hall, but when does inspiration become plagiarism? Yet in […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Tale Spin
What is storytelling? Megan Marz explores stories, narratives, blog posts, and vibes in this Real Life essay. While I could recognize that blog posts were narrative constructions, and many of them had conventional arcs, they seemed to break with a tradition that to me defined what stories were. They appeared to leak literary expression back […]
Posted inFeature
Bones, Bones: How to Articulate a Whale
“I have sat inside her rib cage. And yet I know nothing about her.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
On Writing: An Abecedarian
“To be inside the cathedral of a language is to be inside a particular view of the world.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
John Updike, His Stories, and Me
“But now I’ve been a writer for 30 years, I can understand the impulses that I and he and probably every other writer have: to go after a subject we’re compelled by.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Ambiguous Loss of (Probably) Not Selling My Novel
In a period of trying to sell her novel, Danielle Lazarin reflects on art, waiting, and the space between grief and hope.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Sound of My Inbox
“In a newsletter, the reader is welcomed as a supporter, an ally — or perhaps even a friend.”
Posted inNonfiction
Life and Love in the Utah Desert
Learning lessons about love while living in a 1961 Artcraft mobile home in Moab, Utah.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Shortcuts to Identity: How We Tell Asian American Stories
“When it comes to bubble tea and Amy Tan, I’ve taken different stances, but the two have much in common. They’ve both become shorthands of some vaguely ‘Asian American thing.’”