Chris Abouzeid's Blog, page 50

Journal Launches and Other News From the Lit Mag O’Sphere

  One of the things I wanted to do was shrink the magazine—compress it, taking only the most memorable, haunting, disturbing, or exciting things that came across my desk—and hence pay our writers more. - Jonna G. Semeiks, editor of Confrontation     Greetings Lit Mag Lovers, Today’s aspiring literati face many ...

On Workshopping the Really Terrible Novel

By Leslie Greffenius The other day I asked a friend, B,  how her novel-in-progress was going. I hadn’t read any of her drafts of it. She told me she had given up on it, not just for a while, but forever. “Why?” I asked her. “K [a mutual friend] loved ...

Does Publishing A Novel Change Your Life?

By Nichole Bernier My book’s launch party felt a little like a wedding. Well, one where my five children had already been born, and were racing around jacked up on chocolate-dipped strawberries. The bash was in an old brownstone in Boston. There was a long brass bar and passed hors ...

Writer, School Thyself

Photo courtesy © iStockPhoto by Chris Abouzeid When I was a child, I thought as a child. Every fall, I thought, Oh god, what am I going to have to learn now? But when I became an adult, I put away my childish calendars. My anxiety is now year-round and has ...

Book Festivals Galore! A Mighty List For the Literati

  Let me admit it: I don’t understand most of what goes on in a poetry reading.- Jay Bates, editor of A River & Sound Review       Greetings lovely lit-lovers, With so many book festivals on the horizon, I thought I’d offer you something different today. Below is a round-up ...

As The Writer Turns: Learning the Humble Brag

    By Laura Zigman Today, in the hopes of adding to the surfeit of  me! me! me!  threatening to drown us as we swim through social media, our beleaguered writer gets a lesson in the humble brag:

Writer, Know Thyself

   Guest Post By Ann Bauer When I applied to the University of Iowa’s MFA creative writing program, I sent identical packets to the fiction and nonfiction sides. My dream was to earn both degrees simultaneously. Barring that, I preferred fiction. It was the more prestigious program, first. But also, ...

Window or Mirror: How Did My Reading Scope Get So Narrow?

  By Julie Wu I once visited a woman whose bookshelves—all of them—were filled with Harlequin romances of a certain series.  Each spine was identical to the next, except for the title.  She had, as far as I could see, no other books.  She held a half-read identical book in ...

A Canadian Writer Goes to America

Vincent Lam’s debut novel, The Headmaster’s Wager, was just released in the U.S. after rave reviews in his native Canada. Beyond the Margins asked Vincent — an emergency room physician whose short-story collection, Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures, won Canada’s prestigious Giller prize — if he’d share his perspective on what ...

Horizons, Helping Lines and Vanishing Points. Lessons from Drawing for Writers.

  by Christiane Alsop “This could also apply to writing!” I exclaimed enthusiastically as I watched my son’s art teacher describe the rules of perspective. The teacher was discussing the key tools an artist uses to add perspective to a drawing: the horizon line, the vanishing point and the “helping lines,” ...