For the full essay, see it on The Rumpus. Originally published on December 2, 2014. -- Nonfiction is hard to pin down. When I tell people I write nonfiction, I assume they imagine 800-page biographies of dead presidents, or misery memoirs about years
For the full essay, see it on Fiction Advocate. Originally published on October 20, 2014. --- Good news, feminists! Not all hope is lost! Pick up a copy of this slim book and carry it with you to be reminded that yes, really,
For the full essay, see it on The Rumpus. Originally published on August 18, 2014. --- Let me disclose two things up front. This past year I was an editorial intern at the Frances Goldin Literary Agency, working for, among others, Monica Byrne’s
For the full essay, see it on The Rumpus. Originally published on June 2, 2014. --- 1 Janet Malcolm’s latest book, a collection of her essays on artists and writers, is titled Forty-One False Starts after the opening profile on the artist David Salle.
Judith Thurman spoke about writing nonfiction – specifically biography and literary criticism – at Columbia this past Wednesday, and apparently we were very lucky to hear her since, according to sources, she rarely leaves her house. Ms. Thurman said a
Sometimes it seems that I have spent most of my MFA in nonfiction listening to professors and students alike rave about Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo. While I have yet to read her acclaimed narrative nonfiction account of
Before I was a nonfiction writer in Columbia’s Graduate Writing Program, I was a student of Russian Language and Literature at Wellesley College. I started taking Russian 101 the fall of my first-year – sick of the Latin I could
For the full essay, see it on Fiction Advocate. Originally published on February 27, 2014. --- I met the other Elizabeth Bartels at a family reunion in New Jersey when I was in middle school. I had long been used to sharing my
First, a confession: I never finished reading Elif Batuman’s essay collection, The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them. The book came out my senior year of undergrad, when I was already drowning in Russian literature
This just in: Ted Conover, nonfiction writer famous for his immersion and undercover journalist, is cooler than your dad. Sorry, Rich Bartels, I still love you very much, but last night at the Columbia Graduate Writing Program’s Nonfiction Dialogue, Ted