The Lemannaissance is upon us! Thank you so much to everyone at the @oxfordamerican for shepherding this piece into publication. Jackson folks: Nancy and I will be in conversation this Wednesday at @LemuriaBooks!
https://t.co/8UJzZnG4LE
Me: Modern readers are crazy for wanting perfectly kind and decent protagonists. People like that don't exist!
Me after watching both seasons of Jury Duty: Okay, two people like that exist.
Although I liked the first season of Beef--haven't watched the second--the idea of an anthology series centered and titled around "conflict" is hilarious. It's like a composer doing a series of symphonies on "sound," a choreographer doing a series of ballets on "movement"
My literary obsessions, by decade. How long, where to end, where to begin, kickers, ledes, etc.
In my 20s: Sentences
In my 30: Chapters
In my 40s: Paragraphs
No reader has ever complained that TOO MUCH happened in a novel. No reader has ever wished a writer HADN’T used quotation marks for dialogue. No reader has ever wished a writer HADN’T used the Oxford comma. No reader has ever thought, Hurray! Present tense!
The Pitt, judging by its first four episodes, is just ER with less visceral medical scenes and dialogue that's far, far more atrocious. This show is its pluralized title
PSA for writers: "Like" is not a synonym of "such as," despite its colloquial use as one. That line in your bio means you've been published in magazines "similar to" Ecotone and Ploughshares. You could honestly claim you've won awards like the Pulitzer Prize
Resurrection Day Tidbit: My fave means by which Freddy Krueger was resurrected for a sequel? A dog peeing on his grave. Seriously, in part four, that's the plot mechanism--a dog raising its leg and unleashing a fiery-hot stream of dog urine on Fred Krueger's grave. Happy Easter!
Confused about the difference between autofiction and autobiographical fiction? Just remember the first part of "autofiction" is short for "autopilot," not "autobiographical"
“Society is Lemann’s métier. She’s a belletrist of etiquette.”
—Snowden Wright speaks to the reissues of Nancy Lemann’s “Lives of the Saints” and “The Ritz of the Bayou” alongside her latest work “The Oyster Diaries,” out April 7.
🔗: https://t.co/UrQRBow4EP
Back in grad school, a fellow student, regarding a piece that eschewed quotation marks for dialogue, offered the writer two words of advice as brutal as they were correct: "Grow up."