How to Make and Bind your Own Chapbook

Writing

From Poets & Writers (The Poetry Foundation):

Whether you end up distributing your own prose or poetry at a reading or collecting the work of your friends in limited editions, the following instructions on how to create and bind your own chapbooks offer hours of bookmaking fun.

The instructions on this page will show you how to make a pocket size book or a hand stitched or stapled chapbook.  The step-by-step instructions are outstanding.

“The fun thing about writing a book is that it really is a different life.”

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Donna Tartt

In contrast to her often severe-looking author photos, Donna Tartt in person is warm and vivacious, speaking with a lingering twang leftover from a childhood in the small town of Grenada, Miss. Her second novel, “The Little Friend,” was based on that childhood spent amid eccentric great aunts who shared an invented language and wore white gloves at DAR tea parties, but it was Tartt’s first book, “The Secret History,” published in 1992, that made her name. “The Secret History” was written while Tartt was an undergraduate at Bennington College in Vermont, and it remains one of the most indelible college novels of all time; the fascination commanded by that novel alone assures that Tartt can publish a book every decade or so and never worry that readers will have forgotten about her.

Tartt’s new novel, “The Goldfinch,” has been hailed by Stephen King on the front page of the New York Times Book Review as a “triumph” and “a rarity that comes along perhaps half a dozen times per decade, a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind.” It’s the story of Theo Decker, a boy who loses his adored mother in a terrorist bombing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and somehow wanders away from the scene with the painting that gives the novel its title. The picture (currently part of a visiting exhibition at the Frick Collection in Manhattan), is one of the few surviving works by the Dutch master Carel Fabritius; the painter was killed and most of his oeuvre destroyed in 1654, when a gunpowder warehouse next to his studio in Delft exploded.

“The Goldfinch” is a meditation on beauty and love, two things equally fragile and enduring, but above all it’s a marvelous feat of storytelling, reminiscent of the great 19th-century novels Tartt grew up reading. I recently met with her (in restaurant not far from the Park Avenue enclave where Theo finds brief shelter after his mother’s death) to find out more about the novel and its author.

What drew you to the work of Fabritius and “The Goldfinch” as fictional subjects?

It was just a gift, when I read about the history of the painting. He died young. Insofar as we know him, he was revolutionary. He was Rembrandt’s most famous pupil, the great painter of his day. If you look at “The Goldfinch,” it’s that quality of daylight. It’s Rembrandt’s technique, but not that golden, lit-from-within quality of Rembrandt. Fabritius used it to paint sunlight. Vermeer picked up on that. The quality of daylight that we love in Vermeer, he got from Fabritius. He was the link between Rembrandt and Vermeer.

Read the rest of this post on Salon.com

Joyce Carol Oates on Writing

Writers on Writing,

In this article from The Washington Post Joyce Carol Oates interviews herself:

All right, let’s cut to it — our audience, curiosity whetted by the ubiquitous social media, wants avidly to know: What is the most embarrassing thing that has happened to you lately?

Do you mean as a “writer” — or just more generally?

Don’t be circumspect! Interest in you, at least minimal interest, derives from your being a “writer.”

Well — I was in the grocery store yesterday, in the dairy section, when a woman who’d been staring at me quizzically asked, “Are you some kind of writer?” Vaguely, I shook my head no, as if I might not have heard the question, and eased away without glancing back . . .

And then?

And then someone who knew me breezed by saying in a loud voice, “Hello, Joyce!” — and the woman must have overheard . . .

That is embarrassing! Denying your own writer-self, and even as the cock began to crow, someone comes along and outs you! Is this some kind of absurd modesty?

I could not explain to the woman: “I am not ‘Joyce Carol Oates’ right now, but a shopper in a grocery store. And the dairy section is freezing.”

If police had arrived and demanded your I.D., you’d have had to confess — what?

My driver’s license, passport, social security — are all in the name “Joyce Carol Smith.”

Read the rest of this article on The Washington Post.

Sensational Literary Sex Scenes

Writers on Writing, Writing, Writing Sex

Many writers find it difficult to write about sex. This list of fantastic sex scenes gives the shy writer inspiration.  Find the full list here:

Lustful, moving and hilarious quotes

With the Guardian bad sex awards shortlist out this week, our thoughts turn once again to what makes erotic literature erotic.

Ask any author what the most difficult part of a novel is, and the answer will likely be not the closing line or plot, but penning a convincing sex scene. From Madame Bovary to modern day Mills & Boon classics, novelists have for centuries attempted to capture the essence of lust, passion, uncertainty and sheer adrenaline that sex conjures up, with varying levels of success.

Below, we look at some of best, worst and most surreal excepts from sex scenes that literature has had to offer over the ages. Prepare yourself for some obscure metaphors, explicit language and all-round hanky panky…

Here is a list (and summary) of great sex scenes for your inspiration!