July 31st, 2011 / 1:05 am
Roundup

Late Night Links

Anna Clark offers a reading list for narrative nonfiction. Along those lines, longform nonfiction might be enjoying a surge in popularity.

At The New Republic, Ruth Franklin talks about writing about captivity.

Did you know Colson Whitehead is writing about The World Series of Poker for Grantland?

The Atlantic’s Fiction 2011 issue is now online.

More reading: Sarah Malone at the Good Men Project and Gabe Durham at Route 9.

By the way, you can take a free online class in artificial intelligence at Stanford this fall.

9 Comments

  1. Jackson Nieuwland

      everything is fantastic

  2. KKB

      Too cool, man!  I am all over that free Stanford class.  Thank you!

  3. deadgod

      I’m curious as to the “Fiction for writers of narrative nonfiction” list.  –not that it’s not a list of great books – the ones I’ve read are that – , but rather, what the criteria were/would be for in/ex clusion.  For example, in what way(s) is Chekhov better for narrative nonfiction writers to learn from than Gogol or Babel, say, or O’Connor or Munro rather than Singer, or Steinbeck rather than Hemingway’s stories?  Again, not that the chosens are at all lame, but what recommends them for the purpose they’re recommended for?

  4. Roxane

      You might ask Anna Clark. I think she allows comments on her blog. Those are great questions. 

  5. anonymish

      Anyone else think the Atlantic issue was a snore? I kept trying to imagine the implied reader, the one who loves odorless, flavorless, wonder-bread-ish fiction. It’s not that I don’t think they are out there, it’s that I don’t want to think about them. 

  6. Bwhobson

      Yes, quite boring. But why? What happened?

  7. MFBomb

      I stopped after the first few lines of the story about a writer.  Snore.

      Was the Dybek story good? 

  8. Roxane

      I suspect the choices were “safe.” Most of the stories weren’t my cup of tea. I dismissed the story about the writer outright. I just cannot with most stories about writers.

  9. Leapsloth14

      Thanks for the poker link. Good stuff.