The brilliant fiction writer Claire Vaye Watkins has written an essay called “On Pandering,” a call to action against the stultifying effects of a literary system calibrated to the outsize, vulnerable egos of white men:
Like real women, fictional women are often seen as wish-fulfillment. The “strength” that we look for in a female protagonist is often there for sentimental purposes, and rarely resembles the iron, irradiated accountability that matters in real life, a type of strength that’s like the desert—unsparing and mercurial.…
I blew through the last quarter of Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies in the wee hours, gasping. Surprise is rare in literary fiction, which is snobbish with its pleasures, generally picking meditation over movement; surprise is even rarer in novels that run on language as flush, wild and glinting as Groff’s. “Goodness,…
Kelly Link is the author of four short-story collections: Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, Pretty Monsters (for young adults), and, most recently, Get in Trouble. At least yearly, I reread "Travels with the Snow Queen," a story about fairy tales, robber girls, and talking reindeer that also manages to be…
Congratulations are in order for Donna Tartt, whose 784-page book, The Goldfinch, a "beautifully written coming-of-age novel with exquisitely drawn characters," has just been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Raise your hand if you've read it.
If you're intrigued by the words "subatomic bisexual orgy," today is your day. The winner of the 2013 Bad Sex in Fiction award has been announced. Once again, it's a man!
The literary world was rocked — ROCKED — this weekend when author Helen Fielding released excerpts from her newest Bridget Jones novel Mad About the Boy to reveal that Mark Darcy — the best/creepiest Colin Firth homage to actually eventually be played by Colin Firth — is now dead.
Next week, the first installment of The Mortal Instruments hits screens. Cassandra Clare, who wrote The Mortal Instruments series of YA novels, upon which the flicks are based, says that she purposely created an empowered female character.
Julie Klausner's first YA novel, Art Girls Are Easy, is being released as an original e-book on May 7th; the paperback hits on June 1. Set in the exclusive world of an upscale fine and performing arts camp, Art Girls Are Easy features Indigo Hamlisch, a fifteen-year-old art prodigy. She looks forward to her last…
In a lengthy, worth-your-while essay, Amy Boesky reminisces on the six years she spent ghostwriting Sweet Valley High books. Boesky was a poet and a graduate student in literature at Oxford before she attended a life-changing dinner party and was introduced to SVH creator Francine Pascal.
A tipster sent us the press release for Guesthouse Games, a new erotic novel starring President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. Believe it or not, this project is not authorized by the President of the United States.
You're, let's say, a young adult floating in that hazy 18-25-year-old range where you may or may not be resisting grown-up responsibilities by playing Arkanoid and drinking Pepsi Max in your parents' basement. Maybe you recently embarked on a month-long project to re-read all the Harry Potter books and thereby…
Well, this is depressing: female authors are still using male pseudonyms — or ambiguous initials in hopes that prospective buyers won't realize they're ladies — because studies show more people read books written by dudes. Can you blame them?
Salon's David Daley had a little chit-chat with Jeffrey Eugenides' rakish mustache about the state of literary fiction, how it is that the The Marriage Plot had the Pulitzer Prize door slammed in its face, and what Jodi Picoult is always complaining about, jeez.
A funny thing might be happening to the Orange Prize for Fiction, a prestigious literary award that recognizes novels written by women — its sponsor might be changing! Oh, wait, I told it wrong — the funny part is that the new sponsor might be none other than the company founded by a notorious Men in Black-esque…
Do any non-teenage women actually like Jack Kerouac's On The Road? At least one woman does: The Millions' Stephanie Nikolopoulos, who was surprised to hear that most women eschew the Beat author but more than a little pleased that she would be "the vixen of the literary matchmaking board" at her local bookstore…
The no-judgment realm of e-commerce has propelled sales of adult fiction upwards in the last few years, which is funny considering that it's doing the exact same thing (and for pretty much the same reasons) to Christian fiction. According to data from the American Association of Publishers, sales of religious fiction…
Finally shedding the yoke of female dominance of the literary arts, the oft-ignored and long oppressed minority group known as "men" will finally have things to read made just for them. Starting in June, Esquire magazine will begin publishing a series of e-books called "Fiction for Men," finally giving voice to the…
Everybody has those special books that make a big impression on them, and often it's because we find ourselves identifying strongly with one of the characters. Well, it turns out those books might have even more power over us than we realized. A new study has found that when you get really absorbed by a story, your…
"As you're writing this, are you thinking, 'Oh, man, this is good. People are going to love this'?" NBC's Michelle Kosinski asked EL James, author of Fifty Shades Of Grey, this morning on Today. "No," James replied. Later, she described the book as "kind of raw," and conceded, "I'm not a great writer."
