News

I am tired of no one paying me. I am tired of blogs being boring. I am opening up Old Hag again. Here’s my essay about why.

One of the nicest/weirdest parts of BEA 2010 was realizing I was in a book I totally did not know I was in — one with a huge big wall and anniversary edition thinger, yet! The director Mary McDonagh Murphy filmed a wondrous documentary about the fiftieth anniversary of To Kill a Mockingbird at BEA last year – and now it’s coming out accompanied by the book Scout, Atticus & Boo: A Celebration of 50 Years of “To Kill a Mockingbird“, which collects all the interviews from the film. So weird to be in a book with DAN RATHER. Updates as they come.

Only good picture ever taken of me by snapperati

After this Library Journal panel write-up for our BEA 2010′s “You’re Reading That!?!—Tackling Crossover YA/Adult Readers” posted, I ran into my brother on the subway and was like, “Did you see? Did you see? I talked about you in my panel!” And he was like YEAH you called me NERDY. And I was like hello VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER FIVE TIMES. Seriously, though, everyone should read Jaws.

I have been without computer for two weeks and will soon be without for three months, but as a last little update, some recent work:

• Wherein I feel bad about bashing Elizabeth Edwards and bash Rielle Hunter
• Wherein I discourse upon Suzanne Collins, one of the Time 100
• Wherein I admire the Atlantic and scorn the iPad
• Wherein I am interviewed by the peerless Claire Zulkey
• Wherein BY DINT OF PODCAST I discuss future of publishing

See you in September, aka WINTERNET.

For those who stay abreast of such matters, the last few months of the Atlantic’s forays into fiction have been positively nail-biting. In November, the magazine announced it would be offering a subscription of two stories a month exclusively on the Kindle. As if to quell a possible uprising of the deviceless, they turned around and released the yearly print fiction issue to the entire subscriber base. This June, they’ll convene two panels on the topic of Fiction in the Age of E-books at Toronto’s Luminato Festival—presumably, one hopes, to settle the matter.

via The Millions.

Remaking society can take decades. But global rebellion is short work for sharpshooter Katniss Everdeen, who single-handedly foments a revolution in Suzanne Collins’s; blockbuster young-adult Hunger Games trilogy.

via TIME.

People are having sex at Yale?

Amorously enterprising Elis everywhere must forgive me if that was my first reaction to Salon’s Broadsheet columnist Tracy Clark-Flory, who pooh-poohs the university’s recent prohibition against faculty at Yale having sex with any undergraduate student, not just one of their own.

via Politics Daily.

Since the publication of “Game Change,” the revelations of a sex tape and the alarming photo accompaniment to Rielle Hunter’s GQ interview, we can safely say that dirt on the John Edwards scandal has entered an era of diminishing returns. America could handle the soap-worthy battle between a cancer-ridden wife and a wanton home-wrecker, but even the most salacious viewer knows that when the lady of the house takes off her pants and kneels next to the stuffed Elmo, it’s time to pick up your toys and go home.

–Politics Daily

Hello all in this COLD COLD SPRING. A heads-up on two events about which I am more than thrilled, though again, I would like it to be less cold. This Friday, the 23, at 6 p.m., I am reading at NYC’s midtown Center for Fiction for Girls’ Right Now’s CHAPTERS reading series, with a line-up of other talented teen authors, by which I mean teens, not those who write for teens, not that there’s anything wrong with them, either, usually. Then SUNDAY MAY THE 2nd, at a time I do not know yet, I will be reading in the Sunday’s at Sunny’s series, located in wonderful Red Hook, Brooklyn, not far from the IKEA and Fairway that certainly were not there when *I* lived there, you gentrifying mofos. I would so love to see you there! I will bother you all some more about this in upcoming days with more links and ics etc. but just so you ARE APPRISED. (More on events page.)

Here is pretty poster again:

Date: Sunday, May 2, 2010
Time: 3:00 p.m.
Event: Reading from Shelf Discovery & Check-In
Location: Sunny’s Bar, Red Hook, Brooklyn
Google Map

Date: Friday, April 23
Time: 6 p.m.
Event: Reading from Shelf Discovery
Location: NYC’s Center for Fiction
Google Map
Facebook

At times the session felt like a support group, acknowledging that even the most beloved blogs have a natural life cycle: enthusiasm, devotion, love and, finally, exhaustion. Distinct from books, blogs are laboratories for passionate pursuits — where the profit motive can be put aside to accommodate expression and experimentation. It’s clear that virtually no one earns a decent living off blogging, so revel in the liberty of being beholden only to your interests. And when that interest flags and you begin to repeat yourself, as Guy LeCharles Gonzalez forcefully argued, quit and move on to the next thing.

The LA Times’ and Bloomsbury’s Peter Miller wrote a very nice round-up of our SXSW panel, Why Keep Blogging?, on which I joined Guy LeCharles Gonzales, Josh Fruhlinger, Scott Rosenberg and the lovely Emily Gordon. I would like, of course, to say yes, except of course I became OBSESSED with the 97 pages of Tweets the panel got (people cover panels on Twitter!), as well as IRL people saying we were the best panel at SXSWi. (This happened 3 times, and though one of them was Peter, I am certain it was indicative of a larger movement.)

Considering that this is one of the two articles covering the panel, I think the greater question should probably be, Does blogging matter if it does not cover your panel about it?

Also, here’s a video of the very Scott Rosenberg discussing blogging. There’s nothing from the rest of us, but I think my wet hair looks more decent than I had thought, thank God.

Date: Saturday, March 13
Time: 9:30 a.m.
Event: SXSW: Why Keep Blogging? Real Answers for Smart Tweeple
Location: Austin Convention Center, 12AB
Google Map
Sync event with Googlecal
Sync event with iCal
Sync event with Outlook

I was thrilled to be asked to participate in Girls Write Nows’s Chapters Reading series! It kicks off with next week with Dolen Perkins-Valdez. Mine’s April 23rd. Here’s the entire upcoming series below.

At first blush, the heroines of the films “Precious,” “New Moon” and “The Lovely Bones” seem to have little in common — except that they all started out as characters in novels.

Precious is an abused, teenage mother who can barely read. “New Moon's” Bella is a vampire-in-waiting who lives to be courted by a glittering heartthrob of the undead. Susie, the narrator of “The Lovely Bones,” is the product of the kind of suburban idyll for which Kodachrome was invented.

Yet despite these diverging narratives, these girls are deeply, sweetly ordinary. All three want to feel comfortable with what they see in the mirror. All three want the boy they like to kiss them. All three would prefer not to be social outcasts, all three want happy family lives and all three will never, ever get any of these things.

via latimes.com.