Michael Lydon, a well-known writer on popular music since the 1960s, has for many years also been writing about writing. Lydon's essays, written with a colloquial clarity, shed fresh light on familiar and not so familiar aspects of the writing art. Here Lydon takes issue with the novelist Elmore Leonard's "rules" against descriptive writing.  Continue reading...

International bestselling author M. J. Rose's The Hypnotist is an adventure, a love story, a clash of cultures, and a spiritual quest. Above all, it is a thrilling capstone to her Reincarnation novels, The Reincarnationist and The Memoirist. Here M.J. shares the inspiration behind her latest novel.  Continue reading...

Michael Lydon, a well-known writer on popular music since the 1960s, has for many years also been writing about writing. Lydon's essays, written with a colloquial clarity, shed fresh light on familiar and not so familiar aspects of the writing art. Here Lydon explores how the best writers speak to us through their singular literary styles.  Continue reading...

A few days before I was married, almost 21 years ago, I was walking the eight blocks from our apartment to the daily newspaper at which I worked and, at a stoplight, happened to glance downward. Yikes! I was wearing two different shoes.  Continue reading...

For our latest installment in the Backstory series, we welcome Barb Johnson, author of More of This World or Maybe Another, her powerful debut collection of short stories revolving around Palmyra Street in New Orleans.  Continue reading...

Last month, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin announced that it had acquired a dictionary owned by David Foster Wallace, as part of its extensive Wallace archive. Wallace's copy of the American Heritage Dictionary was full of words that the late writer had circled. The Ransom Center released a sampling of Wallace's circled words, but now Slate's Browbeat blog has revealed the complete list. It's a fascinating collection.  Continue reading...