The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction Edited by Dinty Moore Rose Metal Press 2012 It is refreshing to open a nonfiction craft book that does not begin with an apology. Editor Dinty Moore delves right into a discussion of what is possible when writing “flash” literary nonfiction, “memoir, essay, and factual [...]

If you, like many other people — including some seasoned reporters at the New York Times — were relieved to learn that you could keep reading new content from Philip Roth following the 79-year-old author’s retirement from novel writing through Twitter, I have some bad news. The real Philip Roth — yes, him — has [...]

I once asked my father, who had majored in English, gotten his master’s degree in English, and for years had dreams of being a full professor of English before he decided (wisely) to pursue a more stable career instead, why he no longer read novels. I was in college at the time, and just discovering [...]

While state funding for higher education plummets, tuition soars to make up the difference. As a result, young people are often being saddled with insurmountable debt, all in the name of getting that all-important college degree. So they drop out along the way, presumably because it’s too expensive to do all at once (at least [...]

To Waken is to Begin by Melanie Faith Aldrich Press 2012 The first poem in this debut collection opens with a bridesmaid’s dress, and in the next we imagine the size and promise of a fetus at eleven weeks. Melanie Faith’s book considers many rites of passage: weddings, pregnancy, a grandmother’s death, cancer. Faith also [...]

Last week, the New York Times published a piece on its website about the seemingly insurmountable challenge of teaching students how to write. The author, an English teacher, concludes not that students need to read more non-fiction (the vast majority of their high school curricula is already non-fiction), but better non-fiction. She cites the example [...]

One irony of modern life is that as technology makes more and more things possible, we often find ourselves working in tighter and tighter confines. This is especially true for writers. Where 10 years ago, a professional writer might have been working on a 2,000-word feature for one magazine, a 1,500-word review for another, and [...]

Last year, Philip Roth said he was done reading fiction. Now he says he’s done writing it, too. Roth’s literary output could be compared to Woody Allen’s with film. Since he published his first collection of short stories, in 1959, he has written 27 novels and two books of non-fiction, as well as several essays. [...]

Writing ranks pretty low on the list of guaranteed paths to success — down there with sculpting and growing exotic plants. No one goes into it because it’s a sure thing. And I’m not just talking about being a novelist or writing for the New Yorker. Writing, like acting, can take many forms: you can [...]

Dear Ethicist: I am a runner. I haven’t taken more than two weeks off from the sport since my father gave me my first pair of running shoes on my 23rd birthday, 14 years ago. Even when I was hobbled by a pinched nerve in my leg, I stupidly insisted on running before the nerve [...]

It was 1999 and I was spending that autumn at a small art school for American students in a tiny French village. They didn’t celebrate Halloween there. Non costumes. Non pumpkins. Non bons-bons. Like good Americans, we decided to change all that. We dragged pumpkins into the local school and gave the children big sharp [...]

Unfortunately, I now understand what it’s like to live through a hurricane. Sandy tore through my city from Sunday night through early Tuesday morning, forcing millions of people to either abandon their homes or “hunker down,” to use the politicians’ nomenclature for enduring the storm from the confines of your house. I was one of [...]

Just when I think that Zanzibar and I are at complete odds with each other, I have a morning like this one, where a beloved poet walks into my office and speaks to me in poetry. Never mind that he is approximately 80 years-old and speaks a kind of Swahili that is so deep and [...]