On Novels and Novelists
My 10 Favorite Books: Michael Cunningham
Author MIchael Cunningham lists the 10 (really 11) books he’d want with him if he were stranded on a deserted island.
The Author of ‘The Nest’ on How She Got Up the Courage to Write
Here’s an interview with Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, author of the hit novel The Nest, which I read last month.
Sweeney decided to go back to school for an MFA in fiction writing at the age of 50. She’s currently writing the screenplay for the feature film version of her novel.
Grave Disruptions: Elizabeth Little interviews Laura Lippman
Laura Lippman is the New York Times –bestselling author of the Edgar Award–winning Tess Monaghan series and nine acclaimed standalone mysteries. A graduate of Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, Lippman worked for 20 years as a reporter, including 12 at the Baltimore Sun.
Elizabeth Little interviews Laura Lippman, whose latest novel is the stand-alone mystery Wilde Lake.
Kurt Vonnegut Diagrams the Shape of All Stories in a Master’s Thesis Rejected by U. Chicago
“What has been my prettiest contribution to the culture?” asked Kurt Vonnegut in his autobiography Palm Sunday. His answer? His master’s thesis in anthropology for the University of Chicago, “which was rejected because it was so simple and looked like too much fun.” The elegant simplicity and playfulness of Vonnegut’s idea is exactly its enduring appeal. The idea is so simple, in fact, that Vonnegut sums the whole thing up in one elegant sentence: “The fundamental idea is that stories have shapes which can be drawn on graph paper, and that the shape of a given society’s stories is at least as interesting as the shape of its pots or spearheads.”
This piece, which features an infographic, also includes a short video of Vonnegut explaining his ideas. There are also links to other articles about Vonnegut.
© 2016 by Mary Daniels Brown
