Monthly archive - January 2018

The question of how to make a living as a writer is at its surface very simple. The answer is, you write whenever you're not doing your real, proper job. The proper job, where you earn your proper living. The answer is, you feel grateful to have a job at all. The answer is, you tuck your writing away, like a cyclist rolling up one trouser leg so the cuff doesn't get caught up in the chain.  Read more

A publishing success story that continues to receive mainstream (and industry) media attention is that of Rupi Kaur's Milk and Honey. One wonders how many more profiles can be written of Kaur, though the story offers multiple angles: her work was first self-published, for example, and it's a collection of poetry. Who reads and buys poetry anymore?  Read more

For the past 57 years, one of the most original imaginations ever to grace American letters has lived in a hundred-year-old house built from a kit from Sears.

"You could order it out of a catalogue," its owner, the writer Ursula K. Le Guin, told me three years ago.  Read more