News

Wall Street Journal and YA

Should parents censor their children’s reading? That’s one of the questions brought up by the storm over the Wall Street Journal opinion piece by Meghan Cox Gurdon on the current fashion in YA lit. Gurdon’s review of the genre, called Darkness Too Visible, called out publishers and writers for — in my reading of it — both sensationalizing and normalizing pathological behavior. “If you think it matters what is inside a young person’s mind, surely Read more…

By Patrice Sarath, ago

Where are the women writers at?

Two recent news controversies have come up surround women and writing. In one, famed author V.S. Naipaul opined that women write feminine tosh, and no female writer is his equal. From the Guardian: The author, who was born in Trinidad, said this was because of women’s “sentimentality, the narrow view of the world”. “And inevitably for a woman, she is not a complete master of a house, so that comes over in her writing too,” Read more…

By Patrice Sarath, ago

Writers, writers groups, and writing wonkery

I’ve submitted the screenplay and now can forget about it until whenever the results start coming back. This is a relief, a lifted weight. I was thinking tonight, okay, now I can start on a new project, and move forward. At Cryptopolis tonight we critiqued a chunk of one member’s new novel. Listening to the critiques was rather like hearing an elephant being described by a group of blind men — everyone had a different Read more…

By Patrice Sarath, ago