Author: Shannon Turlington
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Negotiating with the dead: Margaret Atwood on what it means to be a writer
The short book, Negotiating with the Dead, is a collection of six lectures Margaret Atwood gave on writing. This is not a typical writing handbook, dispensing now-cliched advice like “write what you know” and “show, don’t tell.” Rather, Atwood tackles the question of what does it mean to “be a writer?” What is the writer, anyway, and…
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Recommended Reading: Gold Fame Citrus
This week I’m recommending Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins, which is a bit of a dystopia and a bit of a post-apocalypse and a bit of magical realism and is the latest book I’ve read set in the American Southwest. In the near future, drought has rendered the Southwestern United States nearly uninhabitable. A mountain-high sea dune…
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Reading journal: Mid-February
Reading has slowed down, although I have one new recommendation to post shortly. I reread The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin with my son, which I think was a bit too old for him, but I still love it. I also reread Dracula on audio. I last read Dracula as a pre-teen or youngish teen. I don’t remember exactly when,…
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Great writing for weekend reading…
Here’s a roundup of great writing found on the Internet in recent days… If you are squee-ing over the return of The X-Files like I am: The Nostalgic Science Fiction of The X-Files (Joshua Rothman @ The New Yorker) This Is the Hollowed-Out World that Outrage Culture Has Created (Ryan Holiday @ Observer) How to Raise a Creative Child. Step…
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In which I critique American Beauty fifteen years too late…
I remember when I used to love to go to the movies. I went almost every weekend, because I could find a movie I wanted to see every weekend. I was often surprised by something entirely new: Pulp Fiction, The Big Lebowski, American Beauty. It seems those days are passed. I can no longer get to…
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Imagining a world without men…
I have have posted a survey of feminist utopian visions. Hope you enjoy.
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Recommended Reading: Lost Canyon
This week I’m recommending Lost Canyon by Nina Revoyr. This was the latest in my kick of reading fiction set in the Southwest. Indeed, I only picked it up because I thought it was set in Nevada (it’s actually set in the Sierra Nevada mountains). I could definitely keep on with this theme until I run out of…
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Reading journal: January wrap-up
Not full reviews or even necessarily recommendations, just some notes on what I’ve been reading. I will never read all the dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction out there, but I keep trying. This month I read a very early apocalypse story by Jack London: The Scarlet Plague (free to read online). This short story feels like an ur-story…
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Hard truths about writing…
This is really such a great post by Chuck Wendig that every aspiring writer should read: 25 More Hard Truths About Writing And Publishing. Pursuing writing as a career is so full of contradictions. It’s an art, it’s a craft, it’s sales and marketing. You’re venerated, you’re reviled. You probably make crapola, even if you’re…
Shannon Turlington 