Bill Cheng's Blog, page 16
November 26, 2014
November 9, 2014
scottcheshire:
Reading to the wall - at The Bookstore and Get...
Reading to the wall - at The Bookstore and Get Lit wine bar, in Lenox MA. What a generous and super night. Thank you to everyone who came out from Lenox and from Wishing Stone.
November 8, 2014
November 3, 2014
penamerican:
Where did Don DeLillo get the idea for...
:
Where did Don DeLillo get the idea for Underworld?
stultsified:
Never before seen concept art by Ron Miller for...
Never before seen concept art by Ron Miller for the David Cronenberg version of Total Recall (which the world never got to see)
att:
Text them a quick #X before you drive to let them know...
att:
Text them a quick #X before you drive to let them know you’re driving and can’t respond.
Artwork by Matthew Williamson
Or don’t?
November 2, 2014
Publishing While Black: A Scratch Roundtable
I can’t tell you how hard I was nodding my head in agreement while reading this post, especially at these parts:
What did it feel like when you were starting out to encounter that—to be like, “I’m entering into a business that is not particularly welcoming to me. How do I do that?”
Harmony Holiday: I don’t think you can go about it thinking like that. For me, what’s worked is just literally not thinking about it at all. Putting on some sort of blinders, so you’re not always working with that anxiety.
That is exactly what I do! And:
Holiday: Being black in America, you kind of grow up knowing from the beginning what about you sells, or what is fetishized about you. So on some level you have an advantage. It’s just somewhere in your subconscious at all times as a sort of protective evolutionary device. You know how your “brand” is. My first book was blatantly called Negro League Baseball. Not because it was pandering to that; because that’s what it needed to be called. But I do think being that flamboyant about something, if it’s in your personality, that’s maybe what sells, besides the quality of the work.
Yes. I had a discussion with another writer recently about what my “brand” was, and she said, “Your brand is lesbians.” It’s not fair, because if you write a book about straight people, nobody says “Your brand is straight people.” But that’s the way it is, and I feel like the only way I can be happy in this business is to own it and simultaneously not think about it so that it doesn’t stunt my creativity.
Anyway, the whole post is totally worth reading if you’re interested in diversity issues and racism in publishing.
newyorker:
While writing his novel, the author Matthew Thomas...
While writing his novel, the author Matthew Thomas returned to Jackson Heights, the neighborhood where he grew up:
The winds of reality began to rattle the storehouse of my memories; the houses were smaller than I recalled, the driveways shorter. A new America had taken root since I’d left the neighborhood, one that organized the lives of its children differently. I could have been standing on any block anywhere in the country. The block I’d come to see existed now only in my mind.
Photograph by Jose Manuel / Agence Vu
bluedragonkaiser:
alternicobase:
Stop whatever the hell you...
Stop whatever the hell you are doing right now and see this! Super Mario to a violin.
This isn’t what you think it is. It’s better.
