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Graham Greene’sThe Quiet American and Antonio Giustozzi’s Decoding the New Taliban — two books that I’ve started more or less simultaneously — are jostling in my brain. In the very […]

A conversation with the writer and fellow at the New America Foundation.

Orhan Pamuk has a penchant for the great but forgotten museums that inspired the likes of Proust and Malraux—places where one goes to contemplate “life after death.”

I can recall my very first reader like it was yesterday — the phrase “See Spot run” and the image of a galloping dog with floppy ears is indelibly engraved […]

Futuristic 3D videogame-esque film “Avatar” is a “triumph of technology storytelling” for a writer/director who had to propel the special effects he wanted into existence.

Who needs proper porn when one can read Chaucer? Both might make us feel good in diverse ways, but assumptions that the afterglow of old poetry is uniquely cerebral are […]

Josh Lieb describes the struggles and joys of keeping daily political comedy fresh, making Obama funny, and working with the creative minds in the writer’s room.

Francine Prose discusses reading as a writer and the importance of influence.

Now that Amazon has shown it can and will cut off access to its stock of books whenever it pleases, the Authors Guild has created this tool for writers. Register […]

Josh Lieb describes the childhood that doomed him to become a TV writer.

They’d make an odd dinner party: The 12th century polymath Saint Hildegard of Bingen; James Doohan (aka Scotty from Star Trek); an American sociologist named James Cooke Brown; J.R.R. Tolkien; […]

I can’t think of any artist who suffered as much in his life as Arshile Gorky. Fleeing the ethnic cleansing of Armenians by Turkish troops, he watched his mother starve […]

The new year always brings new beginnings. For me, it is a time to throw out the detritus from last year, including the voluminous pile of notes I’ve accumulated while […]

It was only a matter of time before internet users used their “collective energy” to make a collaborative work of literature, writes The Independent.

Calvin Trillin is one of America’s most versatile authors—from poetry, to humor, to important investigative journalism, his work stirs envy in every type of writer. Trillin sat down with Big […]

There is almost always something sexy in her columns. The feminists, and post-feminists, forgive her for that, as every woman seems to read her. Today, the something sexy is San […]

Exciting news for Gen-Y back-to-the-landers this month. If you went upstate after college instead of to Wall Street, if you’re growing carrots and raising beef to sell at local farmers’ […]

In the middle of a vigorous political debate last night, the topic of the economy came up. The man I was having this discussion with, a former corporate executive who […]

Gay Talese explains how a childhood spent eavesdropping on conversations in a New Jersey dress-shop and a lingering sense of being an outsider prepared him for the writing life.

These are not particularly easy times for novelists. For one, they have to figure out how to stay focused on a single project or idea for a sustained period of […]

Josh Lieb had worked in the writer’s rooms of comedy successes from the Simpsons to the Daily Show, but he warns those who want to follow in his footsteps that […]

Google’s scheme to dominate the world of digital book vending was dealt a legal blow yesterday by a French court who ruled that copyrights of French authors are violated each […]

The writer often loses sleep over the dread of disappointing others.

My dad read me Jack London’s The Call of the Wild when I was nine. I graduated from high school in a city that makes a big deal of its […]

Psychologists often joke that their insights into human nature come from experiments with American university students, on duty for required credit or beer money. “So we see that human beings–or […]

A California-based web designer is campaigning to ban divorce in the State as a satirical statement after Californian voters outlawed gay marriage last year.

Sometimes the most valuable thing you can do as a writer is to just “hang out” with what you love. For Jonathan Ames, this meant many long nights in Midtown […]

While John Irving has come to stand as the American novelist parexcellence, he is not particularly into the novel—in its modern form—nor, for that matter, America. In fact, as he […]

When asked about how he overcomes writer’s block, TV writer Josh Lieb thinks about the glory of football.

One of the more unexpected things you could hear from the mouth of a recent Nobel laureate is, “Look, I don’t want to see heroes around. I believe in a […]