When two guys walk through the door of the Q train with ‘80s boom boxes, I avoid eye contact: I look at my phone (I don’t text), I browse my Kindle (I don’t read), I put in my headphones (I don’t turn on the volume). I do all of this, not because I hate watching […]
The future of the periodical seems very much secure within the monumental walls of the New York Public Library, a grand space with carved wood trim and oil paintings of iconic publishing houses like Hearst, McGraw Hill and Harper’s. But the evening is not about the past or the monuments to publishers of the past. Instead, the night is about the future. The editors of three journals at the vanguard of the New York City literary scene are joined by their contributors to discuss the origins and future of the magazines.
Everywhere one travels in literary circles—book launches, cocktail parties, the adjunct lounges at third-tier academic institutions—one hears the same lament: We have too many writers. Whether the cause is the invention of the word processor and the availability of self-publishing on demand, or the explosion of new MFA programs, or merely a culture steeped in […]
A little less than twenty years ago, the “chick lit” genre was launched, arguably, with Helen Fielding’s 1996 Bridget Jones’s Diary. Next week, Fielding releases the third book in the Bridge Jones franchise, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy. Looking back, its easy to claim that Bridget Jones was a phenomenon: the book spawned a […]